will you remember?

“All the time.”

    It’d be a strange sight, if you had the eyes to see it in the dark. Two tall men in suits, awkwardly crouched behind a parked car, wielding weapons of steel—while wearing safety goggles.      The inky sky doesn’t help with visibility either, but Fifteen’s ability to predict and loop the future has severely mitigated the amount of trouble they’d run into.

     They weren’t looking for trouble tonight; both of them agreed on the importance of reconnoitering, when it was affordable. Studying what patterns and behaviors they could from CPNs and Ofiuclones was valuable information to gain. With future sight, they could handle the danger.

A line of light races down the street, briefly illuminating the car’s side mirror enough for the two to notice—

—the hero’s lighting-imbued arrow incapacitating an airborne CPU behind them, stunning it to ground it onto the asphalt beside them. Little arcs of electricity keep it helpfully visible as it writhes. Rushing out from cover, it’s finished off by the green-haired one of the two, a spiked metal bat delivering forceful antivirus.

“If we saw that,” Jack begins to say, but Fifteen’s already charging ahead, racing down the street to the archer that saved them.

    The NULL soldier’s fast—streetlights are beginning to flicker on as he runs, a trail of lights growing behind him—but he knows he still won’t be able to close the gap between parties in time to trade favors with their savior. He’s peered into the future enough times to know the best option was to call out, and so he does:

“DUCK! Then dodge right!!”

DUCK, a voice from the dark tells him. He’s startled, letting the arrow shoot off in a random direction. But alerting him to the threat was enough: though he moves a second too late, the Ofiuclone’s attack bounces off, repelled by a crystalline shield that manifests around him. Just a little help from a friend...

And a little help from a stranger. He jumps out of the way of the next attack, drawing his sword to fight back.

Is this how Hyrule looked on the day of the Calamity? It’s a bleak sight, but all hope isn’t lost yet.

He drives the Master Sword through another shadowy form, cutting them in two. As he pulls the blade free of the fallen enemy, it seems to take a life of its own: suddenly aglow with holy light, responding to a presence other than the evil which menaces the city.

It wasn’t unusual for the younger Link to find people who looked like him- he was fairly used to it, at this point. That there was just a lot of hylians named Link who looked like him was honestly something expected- though, he hadn’t really expected to run into a new one here. But that wouldn’t stop the kid from jumping down from the overhang in the barn, landing on a pile of hay and hopping out.

‘Hi! Are you a Link?’ An odd question to ask for sure, but not something that struck the child as out of the usual.

The elder was a bit surprised, but not for the reasons one might’ve expected- rather, this stranger looked an awful lot like someone he knew… who did happen to have the same name as him. What were the odds, right? Though, it might’ve just been coincidence.

Still, the young Link’s question catches him off guard. The way he words it is...

“I’m Link,” he responds, suddenly feeling defensive. For a moment he hesitates in the doorway, but curiosity wins out and he steps inside the barn, looking around.