#linked universe reader insert

The beginning of this story is one familiar to many. There is someone sleeping that must wake up. There is someone watching as a light steadily approaches. There is someone unburdened by adventure that must step into that light from the shadows for the first time. There is someone that won’t be able to grasp what a journey truly is until they venture forth onto one and meet all of the faces that come with that journey, faces that have appeared before and faces that make their first introduction. People that fall into patterns that fall into myth that fall into pixels on a screen determined by calculated on-off switches, ones and zeroes. 

The sprawling randomness and infinite possibility that comes with a universe, or maybe a multiverse (It’s difficult to interrogate infinities on their size) is hard to comprehend. People of a mortal existence naturally want to compartmentalize. They attempt to sort things like chemical reactions or momentum or simply energy into stars or planets or blood or life or stories. They want to create structure out of concepts as much as they once did out of wood and leaves when the rain came. Just as the rain would have them die from exposure, so would the empty, uncaring nature of the universe that they were jumbled into via cause and effect. It’s harsh and it’s scary, and it would be cruel to call these concepts fake or childish. They’re as real as they are believed to be. They protect a fragile mind from the insanity that is sprawling nothingness.

The most important thing to know is that everything has already happened, and nothing has happened yet. Everything is old and everything is new. Nothing that is imaginary is original. Probability is an ouroboros. 

And, it is time for this someone to wake up.

-

You have to wake up. 

You have to wake up you have to wake up RIGHT now. 

Unfortunately, you don’t have anyone to that for you. No one’s gently urging you or urgently tugging you. It’s just you, dragging yourself out of unconsciousness.

There’s still a pressure on your sternum. You feel grass tickling your hands and your feet. You are well acquainted with this sensation. Anyone that ran around in grass, whether it be at a park or at school or in someone’s yard knows the sensation. It’s weird, though— you could have sworn there was… blanket? Here before. There was blanket. There was definitely blanket, and there was a mild chill.

If there was blanket before, you were probably in bed before. And you’re not in bed now. Which is really weird. Ohh, shit, did you sleepwalk or something? Did you go out on a bender? Wait, you’re still in highschool. You shouldn’t be going out on a bender. But there are highschoolers that go out on benders all the time, so maybe you did go out on a bender. That would be pretty bad. What would your parents think of that, oh god. What did you do? How would that have even happened? You probably wouldn’t even remember. On account of the bender.

Or maybe there was an emergency like a fire or something and you had to evacuate your house but you wouldn’t wake up so they had to carry you out, and the safest place just so happened to be a grassy field. Or maybe, you got kidnapped and the kidnappers are discussing what to do with you as you’re sitting there in the grass. You don’t know what’s worse, the sleepwalking or the bender or the emergency or the kidnappers. Well they’re technically all emergencies. ‘Emergency’ is kind of vague. You don’t like being vague. Being vague makes you feel trapped in your own head with your own thoughts, like how you are right now.

Wait.

You’re jumping to conclusions.

You haven’t even opened your eyes yet. Shit, how’d you not realize that? God, you hate the post-dream brain haze. It’s like you’re stumbling through a fog and trying to round up your thoughts, which are all running away from you by the way. Unruly toddlers in your head mashing the keyboard that makes your mouth say words.

You open your eyes.

…

!!!

Holy fucking ow, that is the sun right in your delicate retinas hurting your entire brain.

There is nothing to provide you relief from the brightest ball of burning hot plasma you can see from Earth. So you’re forced to squeeze your eyes shut again. You know, that kind of makes you think, it’s been the same brightest ball of burning hot plasma throughout all of human history and even before that. If there’s one thing that every person has seen or felt, it is that sun. 

Why are you thinking about that right now. The unruly toddlers are at it yet again. 

The pressure on your sternum returns— no. Pain. That’s surely more pain. There’s Even More Pain rolling across bone now like knuckles that are too sharp because the universe loves you so so much. 

Your head hurts. And lord, so does the rest of your entire body. It all hurts. The tingling of the grass from before morphs into a blunt, slamming pain, like the frog in the water that slowly warms up until it’s boiling. This sucks. This sucks so bad. 

It’s not that you couldn’t feel your arms before, more so that just now, you suddenly remembered you had them as the ability to move slowly seeped back into your nerves. Certainly not the first time you’ve experienced this. You can’t even count on your hand the number of times you’ve woken up, completely paralyzed, facing terrifying horrors beyond your imagination, or something. You can’t believe that these episodes only last for, like, thirty seconds. Time dilates between each of those seconds, marinating in a moment you’d much rather let pass. Maybe time is more fickle than anyone else thinks it is. It stutters and it trips and it bounds when excited, it drags its feet when it chooses. 

Back to your arms. They rise toward whatever is digging into your muscles and bones. Try to push it away. They don’t make it, because your lungs decide to suck in a big helping of air. 

You’re coughing soon enough. Well, you weren’t breathing before, that’s probably why. Why are you so slow on the uptake, here?

After all of this time, all of what is probably like one minute, the sun is finally obscured by a dark silhouette. Far too close to be a cloud. That’s probably a person.

Oh shit, it’s a person! 

Your vision, wide pupils now unhampered by the overload of light, coalesces into something coherent. 

You don’t remember ‘coherent’ meaning ‘blond-haired-blue-eyed white guy of an elvish beauty’. You guess that’s what it means now.

He is dressed in some kind of ren faire garb. He has those pointy-ear prosthetics and a scarf of bright blue, under which is an old-fashioned white tunic. And on his shoulder is a giant metal plate, by the way. Wow, what a costume. That’s cool as hell. It’s more realistic than anything you’re used to seeing. You see a lot of cosplay. Cosplay is very cool.

You really like video games. And comics. And shows. And movies. You think about them all the time. You think about them right now, even. They just make so much more sense than the real world. And what’s happening right now. You wish you could take a step outside of your life for a moment and observe it as though it were a piece of media rather than live it. Maybe then it would make sense to you. It’s much too confusing to make out what’s happening while you’re in it. It’s like trying to see the shape of a storm from inside the storm, it doesn’t work. You have to send a rocket into space with a satellite. They should send you into space, instead. Often you will think to yourself, surely this is not how humans were meant to live. And then other times you will think, there is something deeply wrong with you.

Maybe you really did get high or drunk or something and end up at the… ren faire. A convention. Somehow. You don’t know if there even was one happening near where you live. Good lord, that makes it even worse. 

Ah, this is truly a shitty situation. This is type three fun, wherein it’s not fun at all until you laugh about it with other people afterwards. At least his fit is cool.

“Can you hear me?”

Well, now you can. There is your hearing back. You didn’t even realize that was gone either. It breaks the surface of the water back into focused, clear sound. You wonder how many other things you’ve missed that won’t return until you remember them. 

“Ow…”

And there’s your voice. It kind of hurts to use. Like you have a sore throat. Actually, you were just busy hacking up a lung, so that’s not all that surprising.

“They’ve returned to us.”

What is he on about?

“What..?” Your voice is a hoarse, tired approximation of your thoughts. Talking feels like your thoughts are slipping through sand, and only a fraction of what once was makes it out of your mouth. It’s no wonder that your friends, your teachers, your family will say that you live entirely too much in your own head. But they don’t understand that there are moments where you want to step outside your brain, and you just can’t. You’re overjoyed every time you manage to simply communicate your thoughts with someone.

You turn your head to the— what is that, is that a crowd? Sounds like a crowd. You turn your head toward the small crowd of voices that are next to you, apparently. Maybe you really did pass out at the ren faire in front of a group of LARPers. Those poor LARPers. At least you’ll make for a good story, you’d hope. 

You observe… eight pairs of boots, varying in flamboyance. Surely there are people attached to those boots, because they’re all talking all at once.

You find it hard focusing on the different sounds running past each other, like those videos of bees trying to enter a hive in slow motion. They run into each other all the time. Can you imagine living like that, making head-on collisions at full speed and just walking off like it’s fine? Then again, maybe there’s some higher, more eldritch entity observing how humans live and is recoiling in disgust, or cringing in sympathy, or watching in fascination, as one would witness a train derailing. A spectacle that is great and terrible. Or maybe there is no story, and no one cares at all. 

You remember how to sit up. 

“Ah!” 

You yelp. You don’t remember it being this dizzying. Your body’s telling you that you’ve been lying down and you haven’t had to do anything for a thousand years. Yet another time your body is grossly incorrect. Your mind is always at odds with it, it seems. You forget that they are one in the same.

…well, now all of them are looking at you. Good job, you.

“Uuah.” You say automatically. Whenever your nerves get twisted in such a way, your brain reverts to Caveman Mode.

There is an awkward silence afterward. These guys in front of you look vaguely familiar. Do you have a concussion? Did you get high and pass out? Did they kidnap you? 

Your brain really doesn’t want to let that one go, does it.

“How— what.” You feel your left eye blink, and your right follows. “Hi.”

You stare.

“Who…”

Who are these women? Your brain supplies, unhelpfully. It likes to do this with quotes.

The one with the blue scarf and the shoulder plate looks at you carefully, and also holds his hands out in the same position they were a moment ago just as carefully. All of the entire crowd of eight people behind him gather around to watch, almost like a gaggle of curious elementary schoolers. Even though some look to be your age. People your age and grown adults. Or wait, that one looks twelve. 

“Do not strain yourself. That was… quite a fall you just had.” 

Says the dude decked out as fuck in armor and also face paint. That’s a real metal chest plate. That’s a big fucking sword. You furrow your brow. What? What. 

“What?”

The way he looks at you, it’s like you’ve grown a second head, as the saying goes. You’ve learned to identify the emotions behind the expression as confusion, or bafflement. You’re used to this. It isn’t the first time ever that a group of people has looked at you oddly for a thing you said, or the way you look, or the way you act, or your presence in general.

“It’s a miracle you’re alive,” Says a guy with dirty blond hair and more face paint or makeup or whatever it is on his forehead, and a giant pelt on his shoulders. That looks comfy.

“Could they be of your people?” Says a kid- a kid. No. What? Says a guy your age with just so much hair, it’s so fluffy dear god. He wears a green tunic that is worn with age.

“Maybe… but if we’re really before my time, I don’t know if we’d be able to walk around so freely,” Says the other guy he was talking to who also has dirty blond hair and a white embroidered scarf… cape. Whatever. A blue pattern you can’t discern is weaved into it.

“It’s not impossible to think that the land grew safer even before you descended. It had to become the way it was at some point, right?” Says the— woah. Woah. The dude with the headband that looks twelve does not sound twelve even a little bit at all.

“This is true. Though, they look very different…”

“Oh, come on,” There is a guy that has pink edges in his hair and he is very unhappy right now. “Even if they are one of your people, you’re telling me they survived that? Is this how you began your journey, Skyloftian?”

Guy with dirty blond hair grabs his cape. “...it wasn’t,”

“Yeah, exactly.” Guy with pink edges huffs. “This is clearly some kind of trick. It’s a ploy to- to strike us while we’re weak. Obviously.”

Guy with comfy fur pelt crosses his arms. “Come on, vet. They’re just a kid,”

“Yeah, and evil takes on unassuming forms! Do I have to remind you?”

Dude with fur pelt narrows his eyes at dude with pink edges. “No, you don’t.”

What on earth what are they talking about.

…

Wait, Skyloftian?

“Skyloftian?” You parrot. It’s the one thing they have said this entire time that’s made any sense to you at all. Skyloft? From fucking- from Skyward Sword? Surely not.

You see the boy with dirty blond hair and the white scarf cape thing perks up. The two of you make eye contact for a moment, which you immediately avoid. You will have no part in that. 

“Do you hail from there as well?” Oh no. He speaks gently. His voice has rounded edges, painted like stained glass. His footsteps are light as he stands next to the guy that woke you up. 

Guy with pink edges gestures animatedly. “What- don’t go up to them, what did I just say!” 

Do you— he what. Do you what. 

You know that change is important, logically, but you don’t like it. Which sure, you and every other human being on Earth. But for you it’s like dragging your entire skin and body across coarse sandpaper. A change to your schedule like a school assembly serves to mildly stress you out. A missing ingredient, when you’re hungry, irritates you. Anything bigger than that makes your chest hurt from the inside.

So they must be in cosplay. The first guy you saw, he was in cosplay. They are in character. They have to be. You are so familiar with them because you recognize their characters from The Legend of Zelda because you really like video games and comics and shows and movies. That’s why. They look so much like them. You don’t want to look too closely, actually. You aren’t going to look at them, actually. You don’t want to think that what you think is happening is what’s really happening.

“Do I hail from there?” Your voice comes out shakier and more appalled than you planned for, unfortunately. That sucks. You have a lot to say about this. Your chest is starting to hurt from the inside.

“Yeah,” He nods like it is all very simple. 

“No I do not- I’m not from Skyloft,” Your voice stumbles over itself as a laugh ripples up from your lungs. “Haha. No. I’m from the planet Earth. Ever heard of planet Earth? Not the TV show,”

You pad your pockets. Shit, where’s your phone? Where is your phone at? You’ve heard jokes about teenagers like yourself being glued to the things, of course, but this is the one time that your frantic search is justified.

“I’m not… I’m unfamiliar with that kingdom,”

Guy with fluffy hair remarks, “What in the world is a ‘TV show?’”

It’s gone. Was he saying something? Where—

That is your bag. That is your bag who’s home is on your back and on the floor in your room and your house next to the Link from Hyrule Warriors.

Nope. Your bag is next to the guy that is dressed up as Link from Hyrule Warriors, because these kindly LARPers have woken you up from your concussion or your bender or whatever the fuck happened, you will not think about it, and they’re just acting a bit oddly. They’re just still in character. That’s all that’s happening.

“We just collected it, we weren’t—”

You crawl forward frantically before he can finish his sentence. You wouldn’t be out of place in a horror movie. This is your least favorite horror movie, what is happening to you right now. It just can’t be. It’s like a bad isekai. Not even, it’s like a bad isekai fanfic. You’ve read your fair share of these. Everyone wants an escape from their daily life. Everyone wants to be the special main character that has all the things happen to them. It’s cool, looking in from the outside. You live it now.

No you don’t. Everything’s normal and fine and cool and normal. Maybe in another world and another time, you would find the face he makes as you snatch your bag away with a tight, unrelenting grip to be funny. You dig around in your pack, equally frantic-- among your various items and trinkets and papers for school is your nintendo switch? No, not that, you don’t need that, you discard it next to your bag. Then, your hands make contact with the cool, smooth familiarity. It fits right in your hand. 

The screen lights up. There is no signal in the corner. There is straight up nothing in the corner. There is not even SOS. You have no notifications at all. Your display’s gotta be broken. You open your phone. 

“Is that a- 

-Sheikah Slate?”

“-pirate’s charm?”

A boy clad in a deep blue and a younger boy clad in light blue both share a look. The younger one actually sounds like he’s twelve, this time. Now that’s someone that you can reasonably call a kid. But nevermind all that, you’re still getting no signal. God damn it.

Sheikah Slate? Pirate’s charm? 

Secret stone? Demon king?

…

Sheikah Slate?!?

“No,” They are really dedicated to this character that they are playing and that’s what’s happening and nothing else is going on. You tap the screen rapidly. “It’s not a Sheikah Slate. And it’s not a pirate’s charm. And you aren’t— no.” You shake your head. “That would be crazy. Actually, literally, crazy, impossible. You can’t gaslight me into anything. I’m too cool and knowledgeable. And ungaslightable. To be gaslit.  And it’s a phone which is something that’s real and exists, thank you. And I don’t have any ffffreaking signal, so, so-...”

You just want the truth. All you want is the truth. All you want is to know. It’s rare that you are sure of the world, of reality. 

And this can’t be reality. This only happens in your head. You wander into another world in your reading or in your dreams. It makes sense because you know what happens, and it makes sense because you can re-do a misstep or a fumble or a wavering dialogue as many times as you want to. You don’t have shit here. 

No internet connection. Refresh. Please try again. No internet connection. Please try again. You’re offline, retry later. Try again. Nothing. No one. You’re alone. You’re all alone.

“I’m sure you have questions you would like answered.” That’s a steady, sure voice, that’s a guy that knows what he’s talking about. “We have questions we would like answered as well. There is no reason that we all can’t just settle this in a civilized fashion and figure out where to go from there. It will be easier that way,”

You slowly look up from your phone.

The one speaking wears the fierce deity armor makeup from Majora’s Mask, you would recognize it anywhere. It’s not just facepaint.

Or well, it’s half of it. Oh, and the face it’s painted on belongs to the decked out as fuck guy who has a big scar over his right eye, by the way. That rhymed. Whatever. The decked out as fuck guy with a big scar over his right eye who is standing on the same ground that you’re sitting on, in the same way that a real person made of solid matter would. You know who he is, you know exactly who he is, even if he’s a little older than you’re used to seeing him. Maybe if you ignore it a little longer, it will go away. 

‘Settle this in a civilized fashion’. Oh, you would love to do that. It would be so cool to do that. You have read fanfiction where the protagonist flips the fuck out and you imagined yourself doing the opposite and being really cool and impressive to the fictional characters, someone that is calm in the face of uncertainty and someone that knows enough to put the right amount of distance from everyone else so that they don’t get the upper hand and catch you looking stupid or weird or cringey. This happens in real life and each time it does you are stuck thinking about it forever. Unfortunately you can’t be cool or funny or introspective or impressive or anything other than afraid because you are feeling a lot of emotions that are weird im your body, which is really inconvenient when you’re trying to be logical. 

So when you slowly look up from your phone, the absolutely appalled look on your face is cartoonish, you quickly stand up on your own two legs. This is a mistake because you have the balance of someone who just became alive yesterday. You stumble backward. Wait that’s good actually, you wanted to put some distance between you and this… this guy. Good.

“You,” You point at him, keeping your phone safely tucked against your side. “You. You stay away, you fuckin’… anime hair, elf… man. Don’t come near me with all that mystical bullshit,”

His face is blank. 

“Look, I’ll tell you-”

He inches closer, raising a hand like he’s pushing back your intense flurry of emotions, calm down. You wave your pointing hand wildly in response.

“WHAT did I just say.” You are the victor of the battle of gestures because he stops trying to get closer to you after that. Though, you are getting the sense he could fold you with like, one hit. He’s got that old man, well worn strength. “You aren’t listening to me. Listen to me. With your big ears.”

He lets out a quick, bemused breath from his nose. The guy with blue cape snorts.

“My what?” His voice is a bit airy. 

“Your big ears,” You tap your own. Double down, might as well. You feel like you can say anything and your words won’t be instantly soured by worry, unable to be taken back. There’s fire in your veins and also arteries. “Listen to me with them. My personal space bubble starts here-” You swing your free arm in a wide arc around you. “-after which point none shall enter. No one shall pass. All must respect the sanctity of the bubble.”

Wait no, it was ‘you shall not pass’. Whatever. 

After a moment of staring at you like you had grown a third head this time, he raises his eyebrows, nodding. “Just as well. We can all speak to each other from a distance, if you wish.”

You blink.

Not what you wanted. Not what you wanted at all. You have to get away from those weird… these weird guys. You won’t think about it too hard. Not right now. You have to get away from those weird guys until everything stops being so random and disconnected and separated from the natural chain of cause and effect. Clarity can only be found in solitude. 

“…nuh-uh.”

He squints at you. “What do you mean, ‘nuh-uh’?”

“I mean, nuh uh- hey!”

In the corner of your eye, you spot the boy with the long hair and the deep blue tunic picking up your switch. Just picking it up, like it belongs to him and always has. What the hell! “Don’t touch that!”

You march over to him and you pry it from his hand (“Ah-” he says). Or you snatch it. And you step back from him. You still see him eyeing it. You have the feeling that he just let you take it back and you aren’t super strong all of a sudden. You also swoop down and hoist your backpack over your shoulder, just for good measure.

“Look, I dunno what kinda weird ass LARP, improv class, theatre shit you guys got going on. And you know what, keep doing it man. Good for you. Is it a class I can take? Don’t listen to that. No. But leave me out of it. I have to go call, fuckin-… I gotta go. I gotta go.” You have to go to a hospital. Something is fucking wrong with how It All Hurts and You’re So Dizzy and Nothing Makes Sense and Where Are You.

“But it’s so similar to the…” Link— NO. The boy in a blue tunic has not yet gotten over the sudden absence of your nintendo switch that belongs to You from His hands. His hands which are now hovering over the. No. What’s probably a prop of a Sheikah Slate. At least it’s accurate to the game. Maybe you know too much about the game if you can recognize that.

“‘Theatre. Do you think we are performers?” Says the short one wearing the headband with a tilted head and a hand on his chin and a raised eyebrow. His iris catches the light of the sun, you see purple.

Guy with blue cape has something to say about that, with how quickly he perks up. Quicker than you can respond. “We are not performers, I can assure you,” He says. Is he really freaking ‘No, And’-ing you right now. “I am knighted. Several of us are. And we’re true heroes. All of us.” He gestures to the small crowd.

Everyone nods their head, saying all their different words of agreement, save for the dude with the pink edges but it’s not like he disagrees with his gaggle. The bumblebees come to mind again.

“Indeed. There is no need to panic. We are not the enemy.”

In the decked-out-as-fuck dude’s eyes you see sincerity that while guarded, is still sincerity. Honesty. The very serious, very grounded very… very condescending (if you were to try and put a word to it) kind that adults give you a lot and it always makes you wanna crawl out of your skin and run for the hills.

You point at nothing in particular.

“What is that?”

Maybe they are all very gullible, or maybe it’s the genuine fear seeping into your words out of your mouth, but all of the heroes turn around. Guy with pink edges, guy with blue cape, guy with white cape, guy with deep blue tunic, decked out as fuck guy and fur pelt guy. They all reach for the hold of their swords that they have. Swords that are probably surely fake. Surely. They reach for their swords. Even the kid and the not-kid. And the short one. His eyes glint blue. 

Okay, you’re not literally running for the hills.

You feel someone grab at the back of your shirt, that almost trips you up. You simply go limp, and suddenly being faced with your entire weight, they’re thrown off and they let go. You glimpse pink.

You would say that you’re running for the woods, or into the woods. Woods time. You love the woods. The woods are so great and awesome. Those look like pines. Your mind is abuzz. Maybe this is a weird side effect of a concussion that no one told you about before. Maybe it’s all a dream. That would make sense.

An inopportune branch drags across your cheek. Gah! It stings with dirt and grime. 

Your run stutters to an awkward forward hop through the well trodden path and you cover the scratch with your hand. No one expects the Surprise Tree. 

Your face is wet. When in the hell did you find time to spill water on your face? Why don’t you remember that? Did the freaking… the morning dew from the leaves get everywhere? Is there even morning dew? You wipe it off. Your palm is red.

Holy shit your palm is red. Holy shit, you’re bleeding. 

“Over here!” 

You turn sharply toward the voice behind you. Sounds like the guy with fur pelt. Sounds like the Hero Of Twilight. Weird to listen to him talking.

No, no it doesn’t. It only sounds like him if you still don’t have any signal. You just need to find somewhere different and you’ll get signal and you’ll call someone and you’ll go home and you’ll tell your friends about what an adventure you had and you’ll go back to your life exactly how it was before and nothing will have ever to change ever again. Yes.

Focus. Focus! The ground is barren dirt with the footsteps of many people long past. You weigh your odds: you, teenager of average physique, against nine guys, all strong enough to carry swords and wear real metal armor, along a linear path where your only tool is how fast you can run. 

The odds are not in your favor. 

You veer to the left, straight into the underbrush. You keep your hand over your face because you know that bleeding onto the ground makes you way easier to track. You’d say you have some basic knowledge of how that kind of stuff works. Woods stuff. Unless people can only track you that way if they have a dog. You didn’t see a dog. Oh, but Twilight Princess Link can transform into a dog. 

No! Anyway. You’ll have to find a place to stop. You’re sure you have a bandaid or something in your bag.

Running through the underbrush makes you very aware of why people usually hack through this stuff with a knife. You’ve grazed several spiky plants at this point, and you’re sure that your calves are gonna be a whole mess of tiny scratches. You don’t even wanna think about all the bugs there could be, roaming around invisibly just at your feet. You left your dang DEET in your backpack. And not even that, it’s hard to straight up watch for roots that poke out of the ground.

You’re stopped suddenly and for no reason. No, wait, Your shoe caught on a root poking out of the ground. You knew it. You knew it would happen the whole time. You tilt forward and fall off a cliff to your death. 

Actually, it’s more of a hill. A gently sloping hill on which you roll downward and you can’t gain your bearings at all. But it still hurts. 

“Egh- Ow- Ow- Ow- Ow-”

After an hour (a minute), you finally crumple into a puddle of limbs and torso and head at the end of your fall. Your backpack collapses next to you. Thank god it’s over.

You lie there on the ground for long enough to ponder how bad it would be to just not get up at all. Maybe it would be best to just let nature slowly reclaim you, and you’ll die peacefully of hypothermia on a cold night and once again become one with the Earth and universe. Your death will happen eventually either way. Or something like that.

But no, instead you slowly push yourself upward from the rocky dirt with a few sparingly placed patches of grass so that you’re sitting. You take a breath afterward, that was a lot of effort. Too much effort. You need to get more in shape. You look up at the sky. At the clouds floating by, carefree. You frown.

Just where are you? 

LARPers aside, you literally have no idea where you are, and you have no way to get back home. You doubt anything those weird guys say, but the pounding in your head that’s been there since you woke up lends some credibility to their claims, because at least they’re not lying about that. 

You’re definitely concussed. But how’d that even happen? All you really garnered from that was that ‘it was a miracle you survived,’ which doesn’t do anything except for make you anxious wondering about what the fuck happened. You have enough to worry about.

The decked out as fuck guy— okay. You have to call him something else. It’s a mouthful… or well, you’re not saying the words out loud- mind-ful? Yeah, that’s accurate. Your mind is full right now. Speaking of ‘mind-ful’, why would they even call mindfulness ‘mindfulness’ if it’s about emptying your mind. Word sound opposite of what word mean. You’re sure there’s a word for that as well. There’s a word to everything. Information is so vast. Mindfulness is also, like, impossible to achieve, so who cares anyway. You find the breathing exercises to be kind of embarrassing.

What shall you call him? Big ears? No, they all have— they’re all wearing elf ear prosthetics. Hm. Maybe… big as fuck scar guy. Yeah, that’s easier.

Anyway. Big as fuck scar guy was about to- oh god, he was about to tell you what happened, wasn’t he? And you interrupted him! And made fun of his ears even though they are big and you’re right! You don’t even know if these guys are bad, it’s not like they tried to do anything to hurt you while you were awake. One of them was like twelve, thirteen. How evil could he possibly be?

Very, actually. Very. Very evil. You know firsthand as someone who was twelve and also thirteen once upon a time. But that one didn’t seem particularly evil. Or even judgemental. He was just curious. All of them, they were all just curious, or cautious, or both. The same as you are. What if they were telling the truth?

Your sight starts to blur. This is so stupid. Why’d you even run? Why’d you have to be so emotional? Why couldn’t you just calmly sort it out like Link— like big as fuck scar guy said? Why were you so mean to them? Why do you always mess things up like this? What’s wrong with you?

With the back of your hand, you wipe the dirt off of your face. And also the blood off of your face. And also the- right. You should do something about that.

As soon as your backpack is in sight, you remember oh shit, your switch and your school computer! 

…actually, who cares about your school computer. It’s not like it’s any good. 

Wait, if it’s damaged then you’re the one that has to pay for it. Fuck! 

You shove your phone in your pocket. When you grab your backpack by the top, there’s a lot more resistance to it than you remember. It wasn’t this heavy before. Did those weird guys slip something in there? But why would they do that, who would slip something into someone’s backpack, why wouldn’t they just steal from it. There’s valuable electronics in there. Unless it’s because they… they slipped a bomb in there and planned on exploding you and… killing… you. No, no. No, that’s completely outside the realm of reality. If they did, you would’ve exploded already. And they wouldn’t have chased after you. And it would have been heavy before you fell down the hill or took off or even woke up. Though it does make more sense than you being isekai’d or whatever.

Before you can think about any of that at all, you look a little closer and see-

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck is that. What the fuck. What IS that???

There is a giant ass cyclops spider-crab— aren’t those the same thing? Giant ass arachnid. There is a giant ass cyclops arachnid looking CREATURE that has a hold of your bag now. Why in the fresh fucking fuck is it strong enough to pull your bag away from you? What does it need that strength for? What does it need your bag for?? It doesn’t even look like it’s struggling!

The wise thing to do would be to run. But are you just gonna let it take your bag? You’d run if it was, like, a human. Or a coyote. Or a boar. Or a lion. Or a tiger. Or a bear. Oh my! Anyway you are not getting your shit jacked by a bug. That would be your lowest low. Even lower than going ‘made you look’ and running away. Though, maybe that’s your highest high. You got nine people with it, that’s pretty impressive. Ha ha. 

You kick the bug. Your shoe collides with a hard shell. Ow. 

You yell at the bug, “Get off of my stuff, you fuckin’ fiend!”. Nothing happens. You don’t even know if it has ears, why’d you even do that. 

You stop standing and let it pull on both your bag’s weight and your weight, instead— 

You land on your butt. That worked a little too well. The giant ass cyclops looking Arachnid Freak of Nature flies off of your bag, landing on its back and wriggling its legs around. You take your bag back for the second time, today.

In what you can only describe as a miracle, it manages to flip itself back over. It looks at you with its big as fuck cyclops eye. Your video game mind tells you to punch it in that eye, that’s its weak spot. Seriously, why does it only have one eye. Animals usually have at least two, if any, because of depth perception and what not. Are there any animals that have just one?

This one does apparently because it’s looking at you with it and oh god it’s mad it’s gonna attack you and you can’t defend yourself because you’re frozen in fear. Your emotions get the better of you yet again. Shit. Fuck emotions, all your homies hate emotions.

You flinch when it starts moving. It turns around and scuttles away into the wood into the bushes and the roots and the other insects. 

You watch it disappear into darkness. When it’s quiet for a bit too long, like the anticipation before a jumpscare in a horror movie, you slowly lean backward.

…

…nothing… happens.

Nothing happens. 

Nothing happens! 

You pump your fists up into the air. Yes! You win! You are so cool! Let’s fucking go! That was so awesome of you! You did something scary, and you didn’t die or fuck it up irrevocably! Yay!

You sling your backpack around to the front. Now, where’d you put your bandaids. Do you even have any? Oh, thank god, your switch is still fine. Your school computer is also fine. And your DEET! So many loose papers. Your folders aren’t even organized. 

The forest before you whispers. You still your celebration.

…let‘s… go..?

First the forest whispers. Then it rustles. Then it shuffles, like the stampede of cats again. Did those guys find you? Oh, god. You’ll have a lot of things to explain.

Something very old in the back of your mind jerks awake, the hair on your skin stands up.

Look up look up look up!

You jump and throw yourself backward. There is a big fucking thing descending upon you. The air displaced from the big fucking thing’s landing pushes you even further.

They do not find you. You wish they found you. You can’t believe you thought what you now know is comparatively a nothing arachnid was big. No. This is the Biggest. It stands on four legs instead of six instead of eight. Its exoskeleton is sharp, jagged, its teeth— pincers. Its pincers look like they would hurt. Will hurt. The other ones, crawling forth from the trees, surround the biggest. Probably their leader or their queen or something. And you pissed it off. That little fucker ran off and told its mom on you.

The wise thing to do would be to run. 

You’ve never been able to think on your feet. Your brain likes to pluck possibilities at its leisure, which leaves you frozen sitting and thinking on the kitchen floor at one in the morning instead of doing any work for school or otherwise or even just going to bed in an attempt to salvage what little hours of sleep you have left. When you try to do this with not even half as much time, your instincts are always wrong. 

Your first instinct is to escape. So, so, maybe you shouldn’t do that? Maybe you should fight. Fight it. Punch it in its one big stupid eye and win. 

A click emerges deep from its throat, and then its mandibles split open and it lets out a terrible screech, spraying you with spittle that sizzles and eats through the fabric of your backpack. If you hadn’t swung it out in front of you, your stomach would be—

Nope. Running it is.

-

“Over here!”

Link, the ranch hand, the Hero of Twilight, calls out to his traveling party. 

Or his friends. Or his companions. Or his brothers-in-arms, maybe. It’s hard to find a word to describe the kinship he’s found with the heroes that come before him and those that come afterward. Maybe brothers-in-arms is the closest. He’s never had much of a blood family to speak of, so he isn’t one to know who to give the title to or what it’s supposed to mean. But in the very least, he knows that ‘brother’ feels right. 

He makes the familiar transformation from a Hylian to a wolf, a beast of darkness and shadow. While a wolf, even if his sight is greyer and duller, the air of the forest bites sharper, and he can see just as well with his nose. He’ll let that guide him.

He trots forward. First it’s the kid’s footprints that almost glow compared to the undisturbed foliage around them. Then, a trail of blood droplets paints the ground, though not many. The kid’s not bleeding out in the very least. He cranes his neck upward, to see the culprit. An awkwardly placed tree branch. That would leave a nasty cut. 

Just up ahead, the trail they created turns to the left. He peers down the line of trees. There is a path of flattened plants and an absence of animals that dispersed in their presence. He follows it, knowing his brothers-in-arms are not far behind, knowing that they know who he is, and that he’s not just a wolf going where he pleases.

He never really had a plan to tell everyone about it. He was sure that many among them would react with less than hospitality toward what dangles from his neck. Using dark magic to transform can drive people mad. 

He follows it until he comes to a hillside where the trees grow thinner because of the angle.

The footprints stop here.

Link sheds the skin of the wolf, and he comes out on the other side clutching the curse solidified. It’s a little less startling each time, it hurts a little less. Though it exacerbates the dull pain in his side. He’s beaten death. Nothing he can’t handle. He hears everyone else approach from behind.

“They went that-a-ways,” 

He points with his thumb. Though their path is not nearly as easy to see now, the marks from where they clearly tumbled their way down the hill are obvious to anybody that knows what to look for.

The Hero of Winds frowns, squinting with the distance, looking into the area of woods that’s grey and desolate. The decay spirals outward. Evil has walked there, and it has taken life out of the land. “But that’s…” 

“A Gohma nest,” Says the old man, with a grave expression that leaves no room for mirth, as he’s had on more than usual these days.

The Hero of the Four Sword looks like he just appears behind him. He does this often. No one’s been able to figure out if this is a power of his he gained on his journey, or a skill he picked up somewhere, or just because of his… stature. “More of the Shadow’s minions?”

“Presumably.” The old man nods. “No monsters outside of the Shadow’s influence have thought to show themselves in this era, as of yet.” Link feels his eyes on him. Again, he’s beaten death. Nothing he can’t handle. 

The traveler’s words sound like a wince under his breath, “Let’s just hope it stays that way…” 

“Ugh,” The sailor shivers, and he sticks his tongue out. “I feel bad for them. I hated fighting that thing,”

The vet squints at their apparent destination. “They’re the one that decided to deceive us and run off right into the woods.”

Link raises an eyebrow. “Oh, and you’d have a better reaction?”

The chosen hero offers, “They were probably pretty confused waking up to nine boys and men, honestly,”

“They were very disoriented when they woke up.” The captain rests his hand on his chin. “They won’t be able to just walk away from that kind of injury,”

“But they did.” The vet looks nothing less than affronted. Now this, this is a common expression for him to have on his face. “Am I the only one that doesn’t think that’s weird? Are we to assume that everything is just a coincidence, now? For what reason would they lead us away from the Shadow other than-”

“Veteran,”

He stops speaking at the voice of the Hero of Time.

“While your input has merit, it’s unnecessary at this moment. We need to prioritize saving a person from danger over questioning their intent. Should they be innocent, would you rather have let them be killed?”

The mild chatter of the party fizzles to a halt. 

The vet opens his mouth. He closes it. Looks away. He hunches, glaring at the ground as he drifts toward the traveler. Link hears him mumble something like ‘that’s not what I meant…’. 

Funny hearing him talk like that, knowing what form he takes when faced with the magic of his curse.

The old man starts down the hill. Then the captain. then Link, the chosen hero, the vet, the traveler, smithy, the sailor…

“Hup!”

Then there’s the champion. A blur of blue and gold just gliding right past him and everyone else, feet planted on his shield. The sailor gapes.

“What??” He says it from his chest, and it pokes a hole in the tension. His eyebrows are up high enough to crease his forehead. 

Link chuckles, “Keep makin’ that face and it’ll get stuck that way,”

“But- b-” The sailor’s head bobs between the Hero of the Wild, already entering the forest, and said captain. “you can do that?!”

“He can do that,” The captain shuts down that idea quickly. It’s true that the last thing any of them need is everyone breaking their shields trying to surf. Though, Link was there when the champion tried to teach him. The captain wasn’t entirely successful.

And they wouldn’t have time to do that, anyways, because they’ve reached the end of the hill. 

The air of the woods before them is nothing less than dark and oppressive. The kind that puts weight on the chest, every muscle in the body coiling up to run, run, run. But the feeling is not unknown to any of them. Far from it.

Just a little up ahead on the trail is their very own champion, looking sternly down the end of his new sword on which a ghoma larvae is skewered. He lowers it, holding on with both hands, and he pushes the body off with his boot. He glances up at the group.

“Sword’s good,” He says, raising it up to prove that it is in fact not broken. 

Smithy eyes said sword. He has to appraise if it’s actually fine or not, because the Hero of Wild has a way with the destruction of swords and bows and shields, even if they’re newly made. It’s a talent at this point.

“Make sure it stays like that,” He says with a smile in his voice.

The champion doesn’t get a chance to respond, because more gohma larvae crawl out of the wood-work. Literally. 

Link stretches the band of his slingshot, hitting the creature right in the eyeball. It’s stunned still. That’s usually the weakness, when everything else is armored. It’s always either the eye or the back if he can’t just pummel it. He doesn’t this time, instead he just kicks it. It lets out a squeal. Its four little legs wriggle around rapidly, before it stops moving altogether. 

He hears the call of another, behind him. When he turns around, the old man is already cutting through it. The Hero of Twilight blinks. He- he surely had that. The old man knows he had that.

“It’s on my shield!”

The sailor cries out, as he rotates his arm to shake it off.

“Don’t worry, I’ll-” The captain cuts himself off, because now one latches on to his boot. The chosen hero spins in a wide circle to be rid of those swarming him, smithy grasps for the one on his back, the champion picks up the one crawling up the new sword and he throws it.   

The vet kicks away a larva that was intent on doing the same to him. He gives his attention to the Hero of Time, “There’s too many of them to fight, old man,”

Said old man sighs. Even Link will agree that it sounds like a jab. 

But that kid isn’t wrong. It is, indeed, too much. 

“This is true. We shall move ahead, instead of wasting time fighting an uphill battle.”

Link rolls forward, and this sends anything that might have attached itself to him flying back where it came from. He comes out on the other side running. 

“I’ll catch up to you guys!”

The traveler yells. Link feels the heat and smells the stench of burned bug before he cranes his neck to see it. When he does, the traveler is shooting flaming projectiles forth from his sword. Damn, these kids…

He runs ahead to catch up to them after all that can be done is done. The champion follows suit. Nocking three arrows that burn and sizzle, he releases them. They fly in a tall arc, and they explode whatever was left into ash upon impact. Unfortunate for whatever harmless forest creatures were caught in the blast, but impressive nonetheless. The force pushes a short burst of wind toward them. Link’s hair ruffles in his face.

“Whoa..” The sailor voices his awe, but that isn’t to say no one else has a similar look on their face. They’re all still for a moment as the smoke billows out from the ground.

“That surely took care of them,” The traveler remarks, an astounded smile resting upon his face.

The champion looks back at him. “When there’s no time to figure out how to defeat monsters, shooting a bunch of bomb arrows at them works just as well,”

Link reminisces upon all the times the Hero of the Wild completely made up something on the spot, or brute forced his way through a puzzle, as the traveler pats said hero on the back. “…sounds about right,” 

“Gah!!!!”

Now that voice, neither Link nor anyone else is familiar with hearing come from any member of their party’s mouths. The kid, from up ahead. 

“POISON! POIIIIISON!”

Just what in the world are they hollering about?

Link doesn’t have time to wonder, nor does he really want to at the moment. When it comes to the life of a hero, one’s gotta keep a tight grip on the thoughts. Wondering is for later. 

The captain and the old man catch the group’s eyes. They nod. Link nods. Everyone nods. They’ve all done this a thousand times over. 

Rescue is for now.

-

”POIIIIIISONNNN!!!” 

You yell, as you release another volley of DEET from your spot of ultimate tactical advantage up in this tree.

It was probably surely definitely actually happening, what you thought was happening and then thought couldn’t be happening.

Your eyes burn. These motherfucking piece of shit arachnid fucking spider fucking gohma are the worst thing ever invented. And yeah, invented. You would say that jokingly about rain or about an invasive bug or about sickness, like ‘oh haha imagine if someone invented this thing that sucked so bad and made everything worse for no reason’. Except in this case the gohma were invented and whoever did decided that they would be a good enemy to put in a Zelda game to suck so bad and make everything worse for no reason, a Zelda game which is also something that is real by the way. 

Like any normal person you did not think that video games were real, or that other dimensions were real, or that magic was real. As much as you would wish it into existence so that you could do anything and be anyone other than who you were right then, identity disturbance or something, it would not happen because that’s not how the world works. That’s not how the universe works. It doesn’t care about anything some random kid has to say and everything will keep spinning with or without you. Even if you saw magic happen right in front of your eyes, you would deny it. It would simply be too good to be true. 

Little did you know that all of those things actually fucking are they are real they’re so real that they can hurt you and you just ditched the chance to meet all of these really cool characters you think about and rotate in your brain all the time in favor of horrible death by big mama gohma and tiny gohma babies and maybe even falling because you feel your grip getting loose and your hand slipping from all the sweat you sweated. Swote?

And you acted like an insane person in front of all of them. You called the motherfucking HERO OF TIME from OCARINA OF TIME AND MAJORAS MASK an ‘anime hair elf man’. AHHHHHHH!

You would be the worst isekai fanfic protagonist ever and if this was a story you are sure that no one would want to read it at all. People read stories for escapism and for wish fulfillment and the like, they do not read it to watch someone fuck around and taunt their favorite guys with preschooler insults and then get lost and die. From a giant BUG.

“DEATH! Death to ALL bugs who DARE to cross me!!!”

You spray big mama gohma right in the eye as she tries to climb into your designated spot and eat you or kill you or whatever it is that she wants, enemies in Zelda just kind of attack you because they’re evil or something. It makes you wonder, maybe it’s only because you encroached upon your territory. Maybe Link was only ever poking his face into places where he wasn’t wanted, and that’s why everyone kept attacking him.

She screeches again. You are so done with hearing that screech. You could go your entire life without hearing or making any screeching at all and you would be happy. You’d be happy to survive this encounter, even.

But then again, maybe it’s what you deserve. Maybe it is this universe punishing you for existing where you aren’t supposed to. Actually, this universe probably doesn’t care that much either or even know that you’re here. Who makes up the empty void beneath Hyrule, again? Null? That probably doesn’t know about you, either. No one knows who you are or where you’re from or anything about your life other than that you’re kind of an unstable jerk that runs away from confrontation. What a way to be remembered. Might as well just accept it now. Don’t want to look like the loser that said shit and proceeded to be unable to take shit. 

“Hyah!”

What.

You open your eyes. They were closed? You open your eyes. What?

There’s a- you hear a dense thunk. You see the tail of an arrow, and also the shaft of an arrow, an entire fucking arrow sticking out of the seam between big mama gohma’s thorax and her head. She makes this awful, low clicking sound as she slowly turns her body to face whatever or whoever did that. You peer out over her, because of course you wanna know too. 

“Pick on someone your own size, why don’t ya!”

And well, that is fluffy pelt guy. That is the Hero of Twilight.

You always read things that were like ‘and their jaw dropped’, and you never quite understood it because you would envision the character’s jaw literally dropping. It was distracting. Someone’s jaw literally dropping would be a very bad medical emergency. 

Your mouth falls open. You think you understand it now. 

You thought that the most competent heroes who had saved the entire kingdom and world several times over combined wouldn’t be able to find someone that got turned around in the woods. For some reason. Or maybe they wouldn’t want to. For some reason. But they did find you. Because they’re real. And they’re heroes. And they’re here to save you. They’re here to save you! Of all people.

And - okay. Big Mama Gohma jumps off of the tree and leaves it freaking swaying. You tighten your grip on the bark at the sight of the ground, which is very far away from you. You’d at least break a rib. Or a limb. Or a skull. Just the one.

You hold on securely enough with your hands gripping a branch above and your legs wrapped around the even bigger branch below. You are the most scared you’ve ever been. But still, you stretch your neck a bit to see the fight. The bossfight.

The one in the blue tunic and the- the Hylian hood. His hood is down. That’s Breath of the Wild Link. Holy crap, that’s Breath of the Wild link. Wow, he grew his hair out. It’s even longer than it was in Tears of the Kingdom.

The one who looks like the Hero of Men is probably… the guy from the Minish cap. And Four Swords, because that’s the Four Sword in his hand. And his tunic is the four colors of the Four Sword. But he’s not in four. 

Woah, they’re all moving incredibly fast. It’s a blur. You catch- oh, is that the original Link? From the original Legend of Zelda, not from Skyward Sword. Where is his hat? Holy crap, you actually talked to the Link from Skyward Sword, and he asked you if you were from… Skyloft. What’s the jump in logic there. 

The kid in the blue tunic- is that Wind Waker Link? Ah!!! Wind Waker Link!!! With a battle cry Wind Waker Link jumps over a wriggling little larvae that had attempted to trip him up. He pulls out his boomerang, and- woah holy mackerel he just took out five of the larvae at once!

Holy mackerel? You’ve never said that. You’ve never said that before. Why did that happen. And okay. Okay, there is the guy with pink edges. And completely pink tuft, you did not notice that beforehand. That must be the guy from all the fuckin’ games, like, ever. Wasn’t he in four? Or five? Or six? His hair must be pink because that’s how it was in A Link to the Past. Do A Link Between Worlds and Triforce Heroes count, is he also from those? 

That’s Hyrule Warriors Link again. If you ever had any doubts about their abilities to swing a sword, no you don’t. Gone, completely. It’s like watching a figure skater. Makeup and all, he’s got, like, a bit of a smokey eye going on. It might actually be a lot actually, considering you can see it from all the way up here.

Then there is who must be the Hero of Time and Termina. 

He fights like……. a video game character. 

Okay, well, that’s not really how you meant it. 

He fights like- like every swing is so practiced and like he knows where his arms and his legs and where everything all has to be in order to get a good hit in. Like how moves are in action games with everything animated so smoothly and whatnot. 60 frames per second. Whatever. You’re not very good at metaphors. Hero Of Time Fight Good And It Cool To Watch. There, that’s all you had to say.

It’s actually the Hero of Time who deals the final blow. He stabs it in the eye because you were right, the eye is the weakness. You remember Ocarina of Time, you remember being scared shitless of the Gohma boss and it took forever to beat it and then you eventually replayed it and you thought, why was this ever hard for child me. This is the easiest thing in the universe, it goes down in like two hits. You feel a bit like that child again, your heart and mind buzzing with pure, unfiltered excitement. Emotion so overwhelming that you feel it physically crushing you, if it goes on it’ll surely squeeze tears out.

“You can come down now,” He projects his voice up toward you. His voice, that he has. He’s saying words. To you.

“Uh…” You groan in a ghastly way. 

The Link from Wind Waker grins up at you. ”Don’t worry, it’s all the way dead!” And he gives the corpse a good kick. It twitches, and he jumps back with a yelp. Everyone including you zeroes in on the sound, it seems. But then the Link from Hyrule Warriors says something to him, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and the boy lowers his sword. 

“We have red potions and we have fairies. We’ll give them to you if you need them.” The Hero of Time speaks again.

You slowly bring your hand up to the cut on your face. 

Right. That.

Oh god. The infections you could get from that alone. What if bacteria got into your blood and then you went into sepsis. And died. In the woods. With no hospital and no doctors apart from a bunch of medieval men. 

You need to stop being so slow to realize anything at all. It’s embarrassing. You’re like a little worm wriggling around on the sidewalk after it rains in front of the nine coolest people you’ll probably ever meet, just objectively. Would you still love me if I was a worm? 

Focus!!!

You hear someone click their tongue.

“Look, it really is dead. See?” The Link from A Link to the Past and Oracle of Ages and Seasons and Link’s Awakening and maybe even A Link Between Worlds and Triforce Heroes but you are not sure, draws his sword again, twirling it in his hand for a moment, before he leans over to tap the corpse of big mama gohma once, twice. It doesn’t twitch the second time. “Dead. Deader than dead. So, it’s safe to come down now. And then we can all just sit together and have a nice calm talk about what happened, and walk away from it all…” He begins to pace in a slow circle. That is, until he points an accusing finger at you. Objection! Hold it!

“Unless there is a reason you want us to remain here, in the middle of the den of evil.”

‘Den of evil’, huh? 

They definitely share a vocabulary with the series.

For someone that went through four, maybe five games, he looks pretty young. Just a bit older than you are. One would think he’d be the de facto leader just because of sheer experience, but no that honor goes to the Hero of Time. You guess it mirrors Ocarina of Time’s treatment in real life as one of the first games that really cemented Zelda’s reputation as a three dimensional game as video games moved away from 2D, and also how almost every game made after it mentions it in some way. As a legend in the Wind Waker, as a prayer in Breath of the Wild, and then he’s literally just in Twilight Princess. The Hero’s shade is literally just him. That gold shoulder plating looks familiar.

What were you thinking about. Right. This guy. The Hero of Legend. Every game guy. That’s what you’ll call him for now. Every game guy has every right to be suspicious of you. He’s seen so much shit, and he’s gotta think that you suddenly… appearing… must be a trick… too…?

But wait, they still haven’t told you what happened because you were being a jerk an interrupted them. They haven’t told you the what. Or the why. Or why all the fucking Links from everything everywhere all at once are all here, you haven’t even thought about that yet. Why are all of them here? Together? And what, they’re not even a little bit suspicious of each other? With how many iterations of Dark Link or Shadow Link or Echo Link there have been? Where is Link from Echoes of Wisdom, anyway? Where’s Link from Spirit Tracks? All of the other nine of them are here. Why aren’t they questioning each other just as much as this guy is questioning you? Do they all know each other already? How??

“What— what happened??”

You blurt out. 

“What?” Says every game guy, and the ‘t’ is sharp.

“What happened.” You repeat. “I want- I want to know what happened. Because, like— I woke up to a bunch of weird guys with swords, and you all were like,” You lower your voice an octave. “‘oh that was a really bad fall, it was a miracle you survived, uh, I’m not gonna tell you my name but where is your house and where are you from?’ and then you start chasing me and then I had to fight that… thing, and I’ve never seen a bug so big before, like holy shit is this the fuckin’ carboniferous period or what, I still don’t know what happened or where I am or why I’m here or why you’re so suspicious of me or where all of- why all of you are here, and you’re here talking about the ‘den of evil’, like, what does that even mean? What does it mean???”

You throw your arms out in front of you. And you actually make eye contact with every game guy. His mouth is slightly open, his finger lowered. The fire and the certainty gone. 

Before you can break eye contact, you slide forward off the branch below, because you forgot that you were holding onto another branch with those arms. You suppose that’s one way to get out of a conversation.

You hear the wind whistle in your ears, and you see your whole life in fleeting flashes. You squeeze your eyes shut in preparation for the pain, and then the nothing.

You’re stopped. You’re plucked out of the air. You’re floating. You’ve died, and now you’re above your body. 

…you open one eye.

Black fur, dark green, dirty blond hair—

It’s the Hero of Twilight. Again. 

You’re not dead. You’re alive. The Hero of Twilight has hoisted you up by your armpits, your legs dangle just above the barren dirt that would have killed you. 

Maybe it wouldn’t have killed you. It’s more likely you would have broken your arm, or something. But you did fall forward instead of backward. You could’ve landed on your head. And broken your skull. Or broken your neck. Or at least gotten a worse concussion. That would have been bad. Really bad. 

But it didn’t… happen. 

No, right now you’re being held by the Hero of Twilight from Twilight Princess. Link from Twilight Princess is holding you. Like how one would hold a cat. Behind him, you see the Hero of Time, The Hero of… wars… seriously, what is he called in the context of that naming convention? And the Hero of Legend all with their arms out also. Further behind him, still, you see the rest frozen in a run. Well, not frozen. They’re all just still. Whatever. The impulse is stronger than ever to touch the pelt around his shoulders. Touch it. Touch the pelt.

He slowly, gently, sets you down, and you don’t give in to your impulses. 

No, instead the darkness bubbles in the corners of your vision. It might be because of the concussion, but it might also be because of the metric ton of DEET you inhaled. Yay pesticides. You only take a step backwards, instead of falling, throwing your arms out again to make your center of gravity bigger this time. 

“Op-” Says Link from Twilight Princess.

”Ah-” Says Link from Every Game. You’re not going to list all of them in your head every time. Says The Only Link With Pink In His Hair.

“Careful,” Calls out Link from The Legend of Zelda, the originals. Where is his silly hat. You’ll riot.

“Don’t pass out,” Says Link from The Minish Cap and Four Swords (or is it Four Swords Adventures? Does it matter?)

“Uh oh,” Says Link from Skyward Sword. You aren’t as surprised hearing those words come out of his mouth as you are at the others.

“I can’t see!” Says Link from Wind Waker, but you can’t see him either so you can only hear him. No surprise here either

“Don’t crowd them,” Orders Link from Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, and he ushers everyone backward.

“Did that thing poison you?” Except for Link from Hyrule Warriors, who questions you. Interrogates you. While looking down at your poor melted backpack. 

You feel like you should shape up and fix your posture and fix your face and report exactly what happened one hundred years ago. Nope, you mean one hundred seconds ago. Or so. It would be best to refrain from those types of jokes around the guy that it happened to even if it’s only in your head. In your head can become out of your head quick if you’re not careful. Said guy is turned around and crouched near the ground. Go figure. 

You breath in, and you close your eyes, and you do stand up straighter, actually, waving your hands around again. That’s worked twice so far when it comes to getting others to stop talking. Your arsenal of strategic moves only grows— flapping your hands, falling limp, and going ‘made you look’. You’ll be a hero yet.

”I’m fine. It’s fine. What happened,”

You stare at them with wide eyes. You feel a little like the guy running around looking at the ground, except not really at all because they’re going to tell you really soon and you won’t have to travel around trying to match up the world to twelve photos and then some. 

The Hero of Time gestures at Wind Waker Link. He says something like ‘I’m afraid I am out of fairies’ but you can’t hear him because he’s turned around.

Wind Waker Link looks up from where he was quietly pondering the sparse foliage, it seems. What an odd change of pace. And he bounds over, rummaging around in his bag until he pulls out a bottle with a light in it. No. A bottle with a fairy in it. He literally just said it was a fairy. That’s what he said. Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t mean that’s not what he said. You need to snap out of it. Or snap into it, that would be more accurate. It’s all real and it’s all happening and you can’t be left behind everyone else. He hands it to him who then unseals the bottle and holds it out at you. 

The fairy (you never thought you would think that in your head about anything that is flying and small) whirls around you. The pounding in your head, the burning of your eyes, the aching on your chest, and also in your chest, the burning in your muscles and the cut on your cheek all disappear with that fairy as it flies up, up, up, and away. Into the canopy. Free. Beyond the canopy is the sun. And it’s not the same sun that every human has seen since the beginning of time. Not even one other human from your home has seen it. Or you suppose some have seen it. You’ve seen it. But none of them have felt it. None of them have felt the midday heat of this completely alien main sequence star, on this completely alien ground. ‘Alien’ isn’t a word you associate with Zelda (except for that one time in Majora’s Mask, you guess), but that’s what it is. Alien. In the classical sense.

Don’t the fairies disappear after they heal you, in the games? You can’t remember. It was probably to save on animation costs.

Link from Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, The Hero of Time, an older and wiser Hero of Time who wouldn’t be someone dressed as him and really in character, because you can’t play the look in his eyes, tells you this with his mouth and his voice that he has now.

“So long, town,”

Link, the smith, was content in his goodbye to this place as he looked outward upon the grassy field and the woods awaiting even beyond that. He and his brothers have lived, and they have learned, and now they will leave. It yielded its kindness and what it sought to teach them. That is how lands work-- it will teach one what one needs to know, and one will become better for it. It will heal the darkness that festers in the soul. Like mold, that darkness will always begin to grow on the heart if left unattended. That is why one must always take time to turn his gaze inward to remain sure that the self is not at war. 

When he first forged the Four Sword, he had no idea what it would be like to wield it. He was never one that found the need to turn his gaze inward, he was happy with being the grandson of a great smith and the friend to a wonderful princess. Most children would be delighted with that peaceful life. 

But alas, peace is more fickle than the mind of a child imagines it. It can be snatched away at the world’s whim. It took a shamefully long time for him to realize this-- not until he woke up from the fatigue that overtook him post-Vaati’s arrival, and saw Zelda’s face once full of vibrant colorful life turned grey. He’d never seen stone so unnaturally smooth, for when statues are chiseled there will still be nicks and cuts from the tools employed. The only nicks were the pores of her skin frozen in time. It occurred to him that she could stay that way forever, that should he be unable to save her, he would go on to grow up and she would still be stuck like that in the corner of the throne room. Was her mind preserved? Could she see him? Did she dream? Of course, he was immediately distracted by the cool sword he received thereafter, but it lingered in the back of his mind the whole adventure, even after Zelda was unfrozen. 

And that was just his first adventure. He had no idea what it would be like to wield the Four Sword when he forged it, yet he was already fractured by the time he held it again. Maybe it happened before, when all evil roared as it returned to the world. Maybe it was sometime afterward. Or maybe he was always that way, and maybe everyone is. He thinks that is closest to the truth. Everyone is born in separate parts, and it’s all one can do to know these parts. The Four Sword appears to divide the person and yet all it does is shed light on what was already there— his halves (or quarters, really) acted as though they had their own mind, becoming irritated at himself. He would have never known were it not for the sword. It really is a marvelous tool.

Post-adventure ruminating aside, he still remains eager to slay the monster that nearly killed the ranch hand and sought to forge a rift between them all. What a slimy creature! Where it is lacking in courage it brings forth absolutely nothing. 

That is all to say that Link was content in his goodbye to this place. Was, because a few moments ago, the sky cracked open behind him sounding quite like a nearby strike of lightning. 

A brilliant dazzling display of rainbow light draws a line into what was at one point calm in reassurance that the hard part was over, a hole punched through the clouds. That line leaves an indent behind much like when one presses the spoon of a quill into parchment with too much force. The line droops into an earthbound arc— the line, which is a something. The something which is a shooting star. The shooting star which is during the daytime. 

“What?” Comes the disappointed voice of the veteran, to the tone of really? Are you kidding around with me right now?

The others were all suspended in awe, much like how he was. The veteran was just the quickest to recover. He pulls Link out of it quicker than he may have collected himself on his own, or even ‘on his own’. A dull, resonant thud rumbles up from the ground from his legs to his skull. He would compare it to the feeling of running between the normal sized folk when he is small. And he knows it does not come from inside of his head, because he’s soon hit with a short, light wind that tousles his hair. He slowly turns toward the other eight.

“I suppose that I shouldn’t have said anything…”

“…what,”

“You fell from the sky,” Says Ocarina of Time Majora’s Mask Link, again, because a lot a lot a lot can happen in twenty minutes. His voice is one really weathered, like the sound gravel makes when you squish the sole of your shoe into it. Like he’s been smoking cigarettes for the past ten years which you would too if you went through Ocarina of Time and then Majora’s Mask but you don’t even know if they have cigarettes in this time they are usually censored in kid’s games. Do they even have nicotine? There’s definitely alcohol. 

Either way, you have to unstick your eyes from the scar that runs from the bottom of the open blue diamond crest of the fierce deity mask that is embedded into his forehead down to his lower eyelid, though it fascinates you. How did he get it? Who was strong enough to land a hit on him, man’s built like a fucking tank. Not like any of his games give the answer. Not like Twilight Princess gives the answer, either. The Legend of Zelda as a series is allergic to answers, and this sentiment extends toward its protagonists.

He still has his hair parted in two as you’re so familiar with even in his apparent old(er) age. No, he looks like thirty five at most. He corks the now empty bottle. He holds it out behind him and to his left, where the Hero of Winds from Wind Waker which is also a real game that happened, stands, who is rocking back and forth on his little grass stained shoes. He doesn’t have boots. He takes the bottle back with both of his hands. 

“I what,” You ask, because that makes even less sense than fictional elf men being real even though they’re not actually elves they’re Hylians and basically functionally the same as humans they just have pointy ears because they can hear the goddess Hylia really good or something. They’re barely even referred to as hylians in the games themselves, plenty of times an NPC has referred to the player character as a human. 

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, you have round ears. Will they think that’s weird? They had round ears in Ordon, it can’t be that weird. Unless they really are all tricking you and you’re going to look like a stupid idiot by the end of this and maybe get posted onto the internet to be subject to the relentless panopticon for like two days and then the internet will become bored of you.

No. You know they’re real. This is all real and it is happening to you even though you know this only happens to characters in stories, and characters in stories are special in some way. They are special because they’re not special, or they’re special because some in-universe god said so, or they’re special because they worked really really hard to be noticed and they have a bright personality that stands out against all the rest that everyone gathering around the media will make art and they will write and they will dress as the character and they will square away this aspect of their lives for the character and you think someone made a mistake because these types of things do not happen to people like you.

“You… fell from the sky,” 

See, like that. What the fuck is he talking about to you right now. 

“What??”

Is this why they thought you were from Skyloft. Maybe you have been from Skyloft this whole time and you just now woke up from this weird dream where all of these guys were there but they were video games which is a concept your brain would have to entirely invent on its own, built upon other concepts your brain would also have to invent on its own. You wouldn’t say you’re skilled enough in worldbuilding in your dreams to create something so complex as all of human history. 

Ocarina of Time Majora’s Mask Link’s face is a pool of stillwater in the wake of your very reasonable questions. Calm but opaque, whatever it holds is obscured by years of sediment. You played the dang games yet you still can’t get a read on him at all. Then again, the Hero of Time was not characterized extensively in the first place. The most a player can get are hints into his psychological state from the environment, or his idle animations, or the goofy faces he would make sometimes, or the manga but that’s not, like, canon-canon. Why is the dude from Hyrule Warriors here? He is not canon at all. 

“In the very least, something fell from the sky, and you were in its crater…”

“I was what???”

“…and I take it that you do not come from the sky,”

“I do not!!”

You already said you’re not from Skyloft, right? Are you remembering right? What were you saying again? Your memory bubbles up like particulates in a hot, boiling soup. You see them for a moment and then they’re gone. And you don’t have a spoon with you, so the only option should you want to retrieve them would be to dip your hand into scalding hot liquid, and the knob to turn down the heat is stuck.

“That is quite odd,” 

Is all he has to say, apparently.

“Aghhhh, you people!” You rasp, throwing your head backwards and putting the heels of your hands in your eye sockets.

“Unfortunately, there is not much more to be said. I yet remain uninformed in regards to the reason for your-”

“Why??” You let gravity pull on your head and on your arms so the swing back downward toward the earth. 

”…because… I was not there,”

“Then how’d you see it??

He points, back down the path you all ran to get here, motivated by various reasons ranging in their stupidity. The average human (?) is mildly stupid but this does not account for Stupidity Georg. “We watched from far away,”

This makes a frustratingly adequate amount of sense. 

“Well that sucks,”

The Hero of Time, in return, nods. “Indeed,” He places his hands on the belt from which the ocarina- the ocarina? The Ocarina of Time? That’s THE Ocarina of Time???? “And I assume are unaware of how you got here as well,”

You look away from THE Ocarina of Time because you don’t want him thinking you’re fixing to steal it. At his feet is a gnarled sprout that seems to be crawling its way out of the ground with a certain desperation. You have no idea how you didn’t immediately clock this woods as the evil woods and it took the big scary spider for you to understand. “No, I don’t remember…”

And now you’re looking at the AT BREATH OF THE WILD LINK, look away. It doesn’t matter where, look away. He had these massive, painful looking burns that are reddened and peeled and holding on to the entire left side of his face and ear. Maybe that was always there and they just never showed it in the games because they’re cowards and don’t want to show a scarred protagonist. You’re sure a guardian laser hitting you or however he got so injured in that memory would do that to you. You yourself would probably not even survive. 

“…anything…” Now you’re busy looking at the Master Sword on the back of the Hero of the Sky. It’s beautiful, its handle is a deep blue and the grooves unfurling from the hilt remind you of a bird’s winds. You wouldn’t be surprised of its divine origin if you were to learn of it and you didn’t already know. Back over to the Hero of Time noooo that’s his scar. Look at not a weird place. His left… anime hair vent. “Yep,” That’s a thing you thought.

“I do offer my apologies for the way we carried ourselves then. You must have been very confused,” Not wrong. “And I’m sure being chased did nothing to quell that,” 

“It didn’t,”

“We really didn’t mean you any harm,” Skyward Sword Link insists. And you believe him. But that’s not the problem. 

“Well yeah, I know that now,” You gesture big to all of now and present and here and current. “It would be out of character for you guys to wanna hurt me,”

“It would be— it would.” He frowns. “Huh,”

You really don’t want to explain this. Out of everything you have never wanted to do in your life, telling a fictional character that they are fictional— a fictional character that doesn’t deserve to be blasted in the face with the knowledge that they’re little more than pixels on a screen in your world— is one of the things you have the most never wanted to do in your life. That, and catching rabies or something. 

“…it would be out of character. For you. Link. To wanna hurt me,”

Skyward Sword Link points at himself.

“Character..?”

“Yes. I mean, unless I was like, an ancient demon guy. Or a green man from the desert. Or an evil wizard. Or some flamboyant dude like, twice. Or a sorceress, or a pig. Or the moon…”

“What,” says Ocarina of Time Majora’s Mask Link and Breath of the Wild Link. The former has been rendered categorically incapable of fixing his face. 

“I’m not any of those things though,” You raise your hands in surrender. You’ve had enough distrust in the actual real truth for one day. Also, you’re not the moon. “We don’t even have- we don’t.. none of that’s going on where I come from,”

Well, that’s not quite true.

“I mean, of course we have despots. But they’re not /magic/ despots. Like, this person didn’t mind control anyone, people just thought they had a lot of really good ideas and then oh no, we’re living in an authoritarian regime, how’d that happen!”

“What- wait,” Your eyes are drawn back toward the Hero of the Sky, his voice gently pleading with you. “Wait, no, go back,”

He’s holding his hands out in front of him… what, he wants you to step back? Oh no what’s happening this time. Your hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and the image of Big Mama Gohma descending from where you can only imagine she spawned in is psychically beamed into your brain. Your left ankle drags along the dirt a little as you hastily meet your heel with the head of the same Big Mama Gohma at your feet.

Even the Hero of the Sky is frozen by what is to come as furrows his eyebrows at your feet. Wait no you know this face, you’ve seen this face a million times, it’s a face of ‘no, not quite’. “No-”

“OH,” You flick your wrists to point at him. “You meant the- all the, what I said,”

“…yes,”

Might as well get it over with quickly. You don’t want to spend your time dramatically recounting how they’re actually characters in a story. “Okay, well, you guys are all part of a video game series called The Legend of Zelda. Buncha stories about a dude named Link. You. And a princess- or priestess or pirate or functional queen, or a— ninja. But again only twice, and only sometimes. And then there’s a thirrrd guy…” You squint. “that’s bad,”

You shake the pointing out of your hands. There you go. You did it. Your did it. 

“And is also sometimes the moon. Anyway. I was also wondering—”

“You know our legends?” Oh no. That’s the Hero of the Wild and don’t look at his scars or his eyes or his face, actually, just look at the insignia of the master sword on his tunic. It’s okay. You nod.

“Yeah. All of them, actually,”

“All of them?” That’s the Hero of Hyrule as he is referred to officially and he actually started that naming convention. 

“Y-..” Well not him, it was the people in charge of talking about him because he isn’t a person that exists until right now. But whatever. He sounds appalled. “Yes. But I haven’t played all of them. I just know about all of them,” 

“They became games in your time?” Asks the- the Hero of Time? With much guarded curiosity held behind the eyes. Eye. You grimace. 

“Well, it’s not, like. I mean, they’re-…”

“Why did you run if you knew who we were the whole time?” You’re met with the face of the Every Game Guy, with an aura not at all broken by him blowing a stray hair out of his face, failing, deciding it’s not worth the effort, and resigning to brushing it behind his ear. 

And that’s everyone looking at you. Locking onto you. When you were younger you’d learned not to excessively stare because people found it creepy and would tell you so. But whatever, it’s not worth the effort.

“Because you’re video game characters. In my world, when I see a video game character acting like the video game character, I’m like, ‘oh that person’s dressed up as a video game character and is acting like the video game character’, but then you guys did not stop acting like video game characters so I was like,” You dip your head lower with wide eyes, voice a breathy whisper. “‘these guys are crazy, I have to leave right now’, and then you guys chased me into big mama—…” Very incorrect. “the.. gohma. And I was like, ‘hooooly shit this is all real and happening to me and those guys were also probably, real which means I’m in, another, dimension’, oh…”

Your words taper off into nothingness as you breathe out. The state of hyper tension your muscles have been apparently keeping their shape in dissipates, and there’s the familiar feeling of them melting into useless jelly slop in their hunger for oxygen. 

Some sort of sound escapes your mouth. You’re in another dimension. You’re in another, fictional dimension. You know, like you’ve been hoping would happen ever since you were but a littler child and had just begun to wonder what possibilities the universe had to offer you. And holy fuck, you’re in another dimension??? WHAT??? YOU FELL OUT OF THE SKY????? YOU FELL OUT OF THE SKY INTO THE LEGEND OF ZELDA? THE VIDEO GAME??? WHY WEREN’T YOU THINKING ABOUT THIS BEFORE? WHAAAAT????? 

“I’m in another dimension…”

You have to grab your head to keep it on right. You slowly sink downward. What about back home?? Your grades??? Your friends???? The STATE OF THE WORLD?????? During space movies, good space movies, when they’re executing spacewalks above planets to try and do xyz plot thing it really makes you understand that planets are objects in space and that ‘falling’ isn’t real and is also infinite. If you fall in space there is simply nothing you can do other than die. Subject to the unforgiving cosmos forever. In the back of your head the somewhat mocking voice of logic would always think ‘damn it’s too bad they’re all making us do this and it’s mandatory’, and then you’d stop being scared. This is only helpful when there is no real danger. 

“Did you not know this already??” 

“I didn’t say it out loud before!”

The sky above is taller than anything you’ve ever known and ready to swallow you back up at any moment. This place is unhappy with your being here and would like nothing more than to expel you completely, you think, like a mild irritant pathogen made up of weird non-magical things like atoms and cells and cause and effect and pure random chance. Your universe is random and violent in all the ways this one is not.

“Haugh,” You forget to close your mouth, so it’s starting to taste a bit like bitter medicine. “No big deal, I’m just the first human on another planet, ever, in the history of ever, forever, and me of all people, and I’m not even an astronaut, or a scientist, or anyone—”

There’s a pressure under your left upper arm. You flinch. That’s a hand. You don’t like other people touching you and you’ve never known why. Hugs and holding hands and cuddling is supposed to feel amazing, supposedly, a wonderful moment of human connection and yet you’ve never been able to experience it like that. You’re just stuck there waiting for it to be over. 

”Hey- hey. Okay. Let’s calm down,” For the second time today, Hyrule Warriors is closer to Your Face than you ever thought he would be. You can see in full glory his scary blue eyes and his devastatingly sharp eyeliner, probably made out of kohl. Probably to protect his scary blue eyes from the light of the alien sun with. And he’s touching you! Why! 

“Why are you touching me,” The words leave your mouth faster than you can find a tone to fit them.

“You endured a tough fight, my friend. But when the spirit of battle makes its egress, one is left weak on their feet,” He says, smiling like explaining zero things at all is reassuring.

“What does that mean??”

“It means I’m going to help you up now, and that you may lose your balance,”

“You’re gonna what,”

“On three. One… two…”

“I DON’T CONSENT!”

He sighs, letting your arm be free.

“Alright,”

You try to scrub off the lingering touch from your arm with your hand, as though the friction will work to even it out.

“But you have to understand. You don’t engage in battle regularly, no?” You’re about to say that you don’t, not with giant spider monsters in the very least, but then he is saying another thing before you can be saying something. “Even soldiers will succumb to exhaustion if they use up all their life energy,” What is that, a Zelda reference? “I’ve almost fallen in battle many a time, but there was always another person waiting to help me back up. You’re going to want assistance when we go,”

Go the fuck where. Do the fuck what.

“Go where?”

“Back to town,”

“’Back to town’?” You are not even the one asking the question this time. Once again you’re met with the sight of Breath of the Wild Link, his face pinched from the middle in confusion. 

“We should,” Hyrule Warriors Link is kneeled so you can see the blue brace on the back of his boot that matches the blue of his gloves, the blue of his cape, a cape which is a complete mystery as to how it stays up there. Did he pin it in place or something? You should touch it. NO. “We can’t have someone else tag along with us just for our sake, not without knowing what’s going on and what era they’re from, first. That would be unfair to everyone,”

“But we just left…” The boy laments.

Hyrule Warriors Link hums, a laugh kept in his throat. For some reason. What’s he got to be laughing about. “Well, I don’t think the innkeeper will mind our return,” 

The Every Game Guy elbows Original NES Link. “We’re gonna owe the old man double,” Who the fuck is that.

“Again, I paid,” it’s not Hyrule Warriors Link then.

“Sure,”

“But what about the portal?” Says Minish Cap Four Swords Link, resting his hand on the hilt of the four sword itself holy shit that is the Four Sword that’s the real Four Sword and he likes making things up for fun, apparently. He’s probably not the old man. “The creature is not just going to wait for us there forever,” The CREATURE? “If we lose its trail, it could open a new one to who knows where and then we’re right back where we started,”

“Yeah,” Says Every Game Guy, or something, you are still thinking about the CREATURE? “Yeah, we need to corner it before it slips away again. We’re not to be taken for fools,”

“There’s no need to chase it immediately,” Hyrule Warriors Link tugs on his collar from where it was slightly askew. “It’s seemed to focus its energy on finding and attacking us. And think, if the mailman can deliver our letters to us with such accuracy, it can’t be impossible to find the portals. We don’t even know if they disappear afterward,” The mailman. The creature. You fell from the sky. Video games are real. Magic is real. 

“But…” Minish Cap Four Swords Link aims his big, dejected and sad eyes at… Twilight Princess Link. Of course. Okay, now everyone else is doing it. Great. Let’s all look at Twilight Princess Link right now. 

“I agree with the captain,” Says Twilight Princess Link. You guess that’s what they call Hyrule Warriors Link. “If this person needs help, I say we put that first over just goin’ an’ killin’ the creature. We need to recuperate,” He taps his pointer finger on the middle of his palm.

Minish— too long. Headband Link drums his own fingers on the Four Sword and he looks really sad, or maybe torn, or maybe angry, or maybe you are not good at identifying emotions in other people or even in yourself. Being aware of this facet of your brain does not make it any easier to manage. He slumps his shoulders and drops his left hand to his side. “You’re right.” He concedes. “My apologies,”

“We are all eager to find this creature,” Whoooo ever said you were eager, Hero of Time. “But we must not forget ourselves as heroes,” He faces Hyrule Warriors Link— no, the ‘captain’, and he nods. 

“I say we return to the town,”

“What town??” You ask, because zero things are settled at all. Example A: what the fuck does the postman have to do with any of it.

There is an expected quiet after your words, one that is normally there during conversations that lasts about a word or so. You imagine it’s about the length of the break between one paragraph and the other. But then it just keeps going. Someone fell asleep on the keyboard and keeps typing the ‘enter’ key. 

“..hello,” Maybe this is the part where your dream falls apart or when everyone finally breaks character or a mysterious third thing that suddenly ties all of this together to make sense in an actual, logical way without a magical caveat. You are not a big fan of those because if the world can just be explained away with magic or mystery or incomprehensibility then what is the point of being curious at all.

“Hi!” Says Wind Waker Phantom Hourglass Link, waving at you. You wave back of course.

“Ah, well. It’s a small town, y’know,” Says Twilight Princess Link, looking elsewhere.

You cease the uncoordinated flailing of your hand that you like to call waving. “Called?” Kakariko? Ordon? Castle Town? Well, they’d probably have said so already. 

“…We never did catch the name, did we?” Okay. None of those then.

“What do you mean you never caught the name,” 

“It slipped my mind,”

“What do you mean it slipped your mind?? What were you doing there???”

He rests his hands on his- that is not a belt, that is an obi which is very similar to the one of his starting outfit now that you actually look at it. “Sometimes, the livelihoods of travelling heroes causes the name of a village to slip the mind,”

“But like, no one ever said it out loud?” 

He shrugs. “I mean,” 

You gesture behind you with gusto, like the dead big mama gohma is the town and you are the overly enthusiastic mayor. “No one was ever like, ‘welcome to—” You hit something with the back of your palm.

“Ow,” Says Hyrule… Warriors… Link, OH NO! You snatch your hands back to your chest but they hit your backpack on the way there because it’s still the wrong way around. He rubs his forehead with the tips of his fingers. His nails aren’t chipped, and on each nail bed is a perfect half-moon which is better than yours at the moment. You hear someone snort.

You tentatively point at the horrible wound you caused from your healthy distance. “Is that gonna bruise,” 

His eyes grow wide. “Oh, no, maybe it will,”

“Oh no,” You grasp your collar.

“Maybe I’ll get a big black eye, right about here,” 

“Oh, noooo,” You’ve ruined it, you’ve ruined everything. You can never ever show your face here again and you have to shave your head to live as a monk for the rest of your life in this alternate dimension as you learn to let go of your need for all your material possessions in the hopes that you break the eternally unforgiving cycle of reincarnation and finally achieve a state of nirvana. 

“Gods, that won’t do at all,” He slides his hand up to his hairline as he closes his eyes, shaking his head in lamentation. You pull your shirt over the bottom of your face.

“It’s fine,” You turn sharply toward- that is Every Game Link, whose shoulders carry a dry disenchantment. He gestures toward you with his palm facing upward. “He’s just messing with you, see?”

You slowly turn back toward the accused messer. He looks… fine. No bruise. No mark, no bump. You wouldn’t know anything happened at all, looking at him. 

“I’ll be alright,” The only thing he has is this weird smile on his face that hides things behind it. But you don’t know what. That’s the unfortunate thing about growing older. You only find out how much you don’t know and probably never will know about everything. Maybe you will only be satisfied if you know all about when, where, and why the universe unfolds in front of you for the rest of your life, and maybe you will die unsatisfied. But then again you are only a teenager so how much of that is true and how much of that is you thinking that you know everything now and will never learn anything new ever again. “I’m a knight, I get hurt worse when sparring. You shouldn’t fret,”

You just stare at him. 

“…as for what the town’s called,” That is Twilight Princess Link again. That is not what you were just talking about at all. Town? They’re talking about town now, again. Okay. “The way we went about meetin’ people was not conducive for a dialogue about the name itself,”

Whatever that means. You let your shirt collar go. “Well how long were you at there for,”

“Oh, uh,” He sucks air through his teeth. “Couple weeks?”

What on Earth. 

You’re definitely making a face, you can tell, because your forehead and cheeks are starting to hurt. “…couple weeks,” 

“Yep,”

“Was there not, like,” You stretch your index and thumb out, as though you were outlining a rectangle. You keep it sequestered to in front of you and your backpack and nowhere else. “a sign. That said the name,” 

He scrunches the corner of his lip. “None of us can quite read the script that they use, unfortunately,”

Headband Link is digging in his bag, your eyes are drawn to the movement for a moment. “But you can talk to the people,”

“That’s true,”

“Of the town,”

“Yep,”

“You can speak to them and they understand you,”

“Yep,”

“And you understand them,”

“Clearly,”

You squint, eyelashes a shaky blurry haze. 

“…is everything in cursive, or something,”

“Ah!” He waves his hand up and down, and you imagine him as an old man saying something like ‘bah!’. “Naw, it ain’t cursed. Don’t worry,” What?

“That’s not what I said,” 

“It isn’t in cursive,” There’s a collection of sounds from the direction ooooof Headband Link, there he is. He’s digging in his bag and it stretches all the way up to his shoulder even though it is the size of about a large pencil case. Maybe he suddenly became an amputee just now and he’s just really nonchalant about it. No, that would be the wrong Link. And the wrong time. Any thoughts of this dissipate when he pulls his arm back out, carrying something of a tiny seed between his thumb and index. “We use jabber nuts. They transform words into something the user can understand, but they don’t transform writing,”

Oh. 

OH, right. You remember the Minish cap. 

“But I thought they only worked for the Minish?” 

He blinks once, his eyes sparkle with colors galore. Twice, you doubt yourself on ever seeing it at all. Thrice, he closes his fingers around the seed and glances sidelong at the Hero of Time. Quadrice- quad… four. Fource. Ha! Fource, he returns two non colorful eyeballs to you.

“…no. These work for all tongues,”

You point at your mouth. “Even English?”

“If it’s a spoken language, it will work. Is that what you speak?”

“…yeah,” You awkwardly splay out your hands over your backpack. “You know, I kinda thought we were all talking in it but I guess that wouldn’t really make sense. It would be statistically impossible,” The material is fuzzy and frayed in places, some with age and some because of the acid that you got sprayed at you. How does a living thing even keep a liquid so corrosive inside of its body without the liquid corroding its body. You guess that’s what a stomach lining does. You’re surprised you have yet to throw up, or maybe you did when you were in the air (???) but you don’t remember it. You don’t feel hungry, though. You don’t feel much of anything. You feel like you’re floating. 

“Hm,” What could the Hero of Time possibly want, standing all tall and certain and discerning and intimidating and condescending and what’s under his scarred eye— will you stop looking at that? Are you five? What were you saying again. Condescending. You don’t even use that word lightly. You use it, HEAVILY. “You speak as though you have never witnessed any sort of magic, yet you unmistakably possess profound insight into the details of our respective adventures,”

Oh. 

It probably would have been better to not immediately mention the moon to the degree that you did. But no one tells you what you’re supposed to do when you meet fictional characters because of course everyone always imagines what it would be like to meet them but they never consider that oh, they may not like me or oh, I may get too nervous to even talk to them because the bare mention of the Thing I Like drives me up a wall and becomes part of my whole mind. No one ever tells you anything. No one ever thinks to tell you anything.

Sometimes honesty is a bad thing, you know this, but there is no way to know the difference between when you should be honest and when you shouldn’t be honest and when you need to be honest and when it doesn't matter and when it does and when you should have known that it mattered. There is no way to know what you’re supposed to do when you know your life will never ever be the same and all you can do is grasp onto the trappings of the awkwardness belonging to your previous life and pretend like nothing else is happening, and pretend like you don’t want to cry and you’re not crying and you didn’t cry before and you won’t cry now because you have to live up to the cool and put together protagonist who knows everything and is ready and prepared and a perfect avatar for some kid reading an isekai fanfiction to project onto. And you’re not ever mean or indignant or deathly impulsive or amazingly slow to grasp simple concepts and there is nothing to even cry about right now because there’s no monster anymore and all the people around you are good people and you’d be overly sensitive if you started crying. 

Without warning, you are a little child again after ten PM at your friend’s house for a sleepover and all you want to do is go home because the walls are wrong and the sounds are wrong and the air is wrong. You’re sorry. You didn’t mean to stay too long. You inhale a shaky breath. 

“…I wouldn’t say profound. Like, Zeltik knows..” You cover your eyes. Every opportunity to not dig yourself into a hole you’ve decided to climb your way out to go and grab a bigger shovel. “…more…”

“Who is this person?”

“Ehhh,” You drag your hand down your face. 

Right now you get the sense that you are being stared at by a very exhausted man. And the little selfish part of you thinks well, good. You’re exhausted too. It makes you feel a little better. Sorry, Ocarina of Time Majora’s Mask Link. 

“Alright,” Ocarina of Time Majora’s Mask Link straightens out to address the Links. You pull the bottoms of your eyelids down, and you can see again. You’ll have to find a better moniker (s) to refer to them by. If only there was a name for a collection of Links…

“Never the matter. We shall continue this when we return to the village,”

“The village with no name,” STOP! 

He sighs. “…we will also find out the name. When we get there,”

“Hooray,” 

“Captain? Sky? Traveler?” Woah. His voice changed. What’s he talking about? Oh. He’s calling everyone’s attention. Why? You already know who ‘the captain’ is, but ‘Sky’ is pretty obvious. Why is he the only one that’s named after his game? You guess ’Warrior’ wouldn’t make sense as a name, they’re all warriors. Neither would ‘Time’, because that’s a weird thing to call someone. You’d at least have to get used to it. Traveler’s a hard one to guess because literally every single Zelda game involves travel that was its whole selling point when it originally came out literally in WHAT way is that supposed to distinct any of them, but since original NES Link is the one who looks up, you guess that’s him. You suppose that he did come from outside of Hyrule.

”You shall arm the rear.” They nod. Oh. Oh yeah, monsters. You forgot. Didn’t they beat the boss? You guess one can never know. “Ranchhand? Champion? Smithy?”

These are easier to guess. Twilight Princess Link and Breath of the Wild Link and Minish Cap Four Swords Link are the ones who look up, but only one of them grew up on a farm and only one of them is a champion and only one of them is a blacksmith, and these traits are not shared. Wait, actually, maybe Breath of the Wild Link- or no, the champion did grow up on a farm, ‘cause it’s implied that his house in Hateno was his family’s old house. There was concept art of his family as well in the art book. He is the only Link to have a dad! Or… he had a dad. Yikes, that is dark. You won’t ask him about that. Either way he wasn’t helping much on the farm because he was too busy swordfighting at age four. 

“You’ll be with… what is your name?” 

You blink. He wants- he’s asking your name? Link is asking for your name?

You point toward your chest, and answer with a voice that’s way squeakier than you intend. “Me?”

“Yes,”

”Oh,” You breath out. “It’s [____],”

This is the part in the self-insert fanfiction you always struggled with. To have someone else speaking for you as to what you are called, it feels dishonest. But this is not a self-insert fanfiction. If it was, you would’ve discovered a cool power by this point. You’d like to have a cool power. That would be cool. Cooler than this. You feel very hot.

“Well met,” He nods as though it were that simple. “You’ll be with [____], in the middle,” 

The three also nod and then become NEXT to you on either side (the “ranchhand” on your right, the “champion” and “smithy” on your left) and you CANNOT touch Tw— the “ranchhand”’s pelt, you will not. Neither will you touch the champion’s Sheikah Slate. You can look down at it though. That’s a good distraction. Look at the Sheikah Slate. You wonder what it’s made of. It can’t be metal, since it’s not electric… and it can’t be plastic because the Sheikah are definitely smart enough to not melt all of the liquid collections of dead biological material into cheap shapes, leaving a scar in the atmosphere that’s sure to last thousands of years and permanently changes the ecology and weather of almost every biome in the world. This is one thing Hyrule got right. 

There are so many “quintessentially human” experiences that you do not find pleasant at all. Blushing, for one. Blushing isn’t always pleasant but apparently sometimes it is and you don’t know how it ever could be because this may just be the worst feeling in the world. You think you’ll be sick. There should be a less gentle word for blushing, one that’s more synonymous with sticking your face onto a burning hot iron. That would work way better.

”Veteran and sailor, you shall be with me,” Iron melting your face aside, Every Game Link and Wind Waker Link are the ones who look up. Yeah, you could probably guess those regardless. Veteran for the dude with four or five or six games, and sailor for the… only sailor. You guess Every Ga— you guess the veteran did sail. Once. That didn’t end very well, though. The sailor nods, and the veteran begrudgingly accepts his fate.

The only name you heard that wasn’t said by him was the ‘old man’ so you guess he is that. He turns around, gathering the sailor and the veteran at either side. “Let us be off,”

And then you’re off, apparently. You walk sandwiched between the ranchhand and the champion, which SUCKS, by the way. This SUCKS. The little child that is you wrapped up in layers of years (because no one ever actually grows up into something new, they just grow around the baby they once were and they will always be that baby. Case in point: most problems people have can be solved by eating, sleeping, washing, visual stimuli, and social interaction. Guess what the things are that a baby also needs) is absolutely LOSING their shit right now. For some reason, instead of a more meaningful and cinematic and thematically poignant part of the game, you remember that part of Breath of the Wild where you were stuck on the great plateau for a week because you were a child and not very intelligent. You had to look it up on the internet. And you found out that wow, so many other people love this game just as you did. 

Anyway. That kid is losing their shit right now and it’s taking everything in you to not let them boil away the little impulse control that you have. You do not even look at them in their faces. 

So the walk back is awkwardly quiet. Comfortable silence for them, probably, but for you all it does is leave room for your thoughts. This is very bad. Unfortunately, you don’t really know what to say or want to say anything. There’s also not much to see. Just the spooky woods, and a couple of spiderwebs. Or no, gohma… webs. When you looked backward, Big Mama Gohma was already gone forever and she didn’t even leave anything behind, which is disappointing. So you guess the enemies really do disappear after they die. Then there’s all the disturbed vegetation, and the slightly artificial, chemical smell that wafts through the air. You guess that’s the result of your adrenaline-induced DEET rampage. 

You reach the clearing you tumbled into. There is nothing here either. When you have to climb back up the sheer cliff (read: mild incline) you tumbled down, Breath of the Wild Link… “the champion” offers his hand to you. 

He offers you his hand. He wants you to grab his hand, with your hand. You would be touching him. With your skin that you have. And he would be touching you with his skin that he has. 

You shake your head rapidly. No, no, no, no. 

He shrugs, and continues on his way. Yeah. You’ll do that also. You have to lean your whole body forward and walk on your tiptoes to not roll helplessly backwards into the three Links behind you. It would be better for you to walk on all fours… okay. Walk on all fours. Call on the very same primordial urge that makes you climb up stairs on both your hands and feet. You haul yourself over the edge and you’re welcomed with indiscernible looks from the- everyone. In front of you. The “champion”, the “ranchhand”, the “sailor”, the “veteran”, and the “old man”, but to be fair he’s the first to look away. 

“What,” 

“…nothing.” Says the “ranchhand”, busying his eyes elsewhere. 

More forest, more forest. There’s that bastard branch you cut your face on. There’s your blood still on it. You touch your hand to your cheek again. It’s mostly gone now. And then you immediately pull your hand away from your cheek, because WHO knows what alien bacteria and viruses have taken to inhabiting the skin on your fingers. You hope you don’t get really sick and die from illnesses that you’re not vaccinated against. You reach a break in the trees. 

The sky is still clear, the sun is a little lower. A light breeze blows through the peaceful, grassy field, of which slightly rises into a mound you cannot see past. A giant crater with the radius of a bus that scars the ground sits scorched and lifeless. The dirt below is freshly exposed, like an open wound.

Right.

How on Earth did you not notice that before??? It’s glaringly obvious against the mundane rolling grass. It has a big sign over it that says HEY YOU ACTUALLY FELL FROM THE SKY AND THESE GUYS ARE TELLING THE TRUTH YOU IDIOT hanging over it, basically. 

You look up. Nothing like that is still in the sky. You think there’d be like, a trail, or something, but that’s not even how meteors work in real life. The trail lasts for as long as they’re burning up in the atmosphere. How are you not dead, not only did you fall but you also burned alive. Probably. How the fuck are you still alive? 

To the left is a giant mountain. To the left is a giant volcano. No, sorry, to the left is Death Mountain. Death Mountain towers over you all, except not really. It’s far enough away that it’s partially obscured by the atmosphere. 

You start running. Your muscles don’t like this very much.

“Wait-!” Neither does Twilight Princess Link.

“Where’re you going??” Or Wind Waker Link.

“Augh, not again,” Or Every Game Link.

You run run run, all the way to the top of the hill. And you remember, of course, Hyrule always has a massive field in the middle of it from which you can see basically everything. Death Mountain, of course, more mountains that you’re sure border the desert— HYRULE CASTLE. More forest in the distance. HYRULE CASTLE!!! At least it’s A castle. But it’s probably Hyrule Castle. A few disparate paths wind about the earth, on which people probably travel with their horses that they have. Not a road or city skyline or even regular town skyline is to be seen. Not an airplane. Not even a train. 

Just below you awaits some sleepy little town… why do people say that. Why do people call a town ‘sleepy’. What is it meant to convey? That it’s quiet? You can’t tell. Your mind is very loud right now. You guess, in the Legend of Zelda whatever town Link starts in is sleepy by virtue of his existence. Half the games start with him sleeping. The latest two also start with the protagonist (because Echoes of Wisdom is very distinctly the game where you do not play as Link) running out onto a cliff face to look out at the world around them so the devs can show off their game. For Breath of the Wild, it made sense since the whole world was part of the game, but in Echoes of Wisdom it was just Hyrule Castle because that Zelda would have no reason to be looking out at the world for the first time. You don’t know how long she was trapped by Ganon- “Ganon” for, but it was probably less time than 100 years. 

You can see tiny people doing their cycles around the buildings and within the- what is that, a market. Is that a HORSE. HOLY SHIT! Normally, you would stay above the town or behind Link as he explores the town. You’d stay this far away. It never occurred to you, how far away you were, and how little you knew these places. How different it is to breathe the air and know that when you see a Thing in the distance, you can go there. 

“It really is beautiful, isn’t it,”

Who is talking you see nothing and no one. You look down. Minish Cap Four Swords Link is there.

“Ah!” You yelp. You leap backwards.

“Sorry,” He smiles softly, raising his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to startle you,”

“…no problem,” You lower your hands from where you had apparently raised them into a fighting position. You look back at the absolutely tiny village by today’s standards, and then back at him. “I assume that’s the place you guys were talking about,”

“Yeah. We just left our rooms at the inn open, buuut I doubt anyone took our spot in that time,”

“I- I gathered,”

“Please say something before you run off like that,” Skyward Sword Link laments, jogging to catch up with you along with everyone else. “I half thought we’d all have to chase you again!”

The “veteran” points at Skyward S-… at “sky”. “Have courtesy toward him. He can’t run,”

“Wh- I can run,”

“Sure,”

“It’s just-” He gestures vaguely. “difficult, in air like this,”

Would thicker air make it harder to breathe if you grew up in the sky with thinner air? If anything, wouldn’t having a more efficient respiratory system make it easier to run with a more bountiful supply of oxygen? Or maybe the air was thicker up in Skyloft because Hylia made it to be an ideal paradise for Hylians to live in so it had the Optimal Oxygen Amount. Is it still oxygen here? Do they even know about that kind of stuff? You can still breathe it. It’s not like a name designated by humans trying to understand the world has any power over what a thing does. It’ll continue to exist regardless just as the stars will continue to exist after you die for millions and billions and trillions of years. How do they have stars in Hyrule? Did the three goddesses create just the world, or the whole universe? How much did the devs not take into account when it came to worldbuilding? It it even world… built? Does this have any connection to the games you know at all or is it just pure coincidence?

You’re getting ahead of yourself.

“…I’ll say something next time,” You assure Skyward Sword Link, “Sky”, the hero of the Skies and the creator of the Master Sword even though that actually mildly contradicts the lore of A Link to the Past. But whatever. They all coexist together now. 

“Thank you,” He bows slightly, heaving out a relieved sigh. 

“Whee!” Says the sailor, sliding down the hill on his shield… sliding down the hill on his shield??? You do not remember that part of Wind Waker. It’s the very same Shield of Antiquity shared between Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. The thought makes you feel a little sad and a little guilty, because you know he’ll die and you’ve seen the world after he dies. At least it’s of old age and at least he built a new and better life for his descendants in the meantime. And he helped invent TRAINS!

Despite this absolute crowning achievement he’ll later undertake, he doesn’t look very balanced. He looks like he’s about to fall. Just as he reaches the village gates, he collapses into a heap. 

“Sailor-!!” Comes the pinched voice of the captain, face contorted with shock and horror as he runs down the hill past the old man, who himself has both of his hands stretched out as though he were to do something. 

You have to see the crater again, you have to see it with your own eyes. It doesn’t look real. It looks like someone carelessly grafted it onto this perfectly peaceful and symbiotic landscape for no reason at all. It looks like you should have died there, but you did not, and you kept not dying, and now you’re here even though you literally never thought you’d actually be here. But that’s just the story of life, isn’t it?