A gift for @doodlesaur-central featuring their Monster Chain AU, specifically Slime!Four! Definitely go give the whole Chain a look!
Zelda had once accused him of not being fun.
This was patently false. He was tons of fun. No one knew more about being fun than him. He could play pranks and tell jokes and engage in slapstick shenanigans as good as the next guy.
But when things went wrong, that wasn’t really the time for fun.
He woke with a noise like gelatin coming out of a mold, body trying to reform into his preferred shape. Something was preventing this, and after a few seconds he realized he was in a large jar. He vaguely felt a pang of remembered guilt for all the fairies he had bottled—except bottles were specially designed to preserve things held in them, which meant fairies were kept comfortable and secure. By comparison, this glass cylinder was cold and cramped, with something digging into his essence. He pulled his gelatinous body away from the sharp point, forming himself into a rough funnel shape.
Ok. How had he gotten here?
He remembered the request, that aggressive beasts had taken up residence in the Wind Village. The monsters who lived there had been driven away, afraid for their lives, and of course had turned to their friend, the Hero of the Four Sword, to handle things. He had advanced on the village, even splitting his goo into multiple bodies so he could scout from all angles. This had really been his first mistake. There had been far more monsters than expected, and they had been more vigilant than normal. One of his pieces had been caught by some unknown force while following what sounded like a voice calling for help, and the sympathetic vibrations going through the rest had driven them all to distraction. Fires had been started by a vague figure, and another piece had been snagged while trying to put them out. One of the pieces had thought they saw an old woman being attacked, and when he dove to save her, had ended up trapped in a block of ice. He hated being solid, being solid was contrary to his very nature. The final piece of his body had done his best, fighting his way into the tower at the heart of the city, before being hit from behind with some sort of dissolvable anesthetic. The substance had spread through his body, making him slip out of consciousness.
Link took stock of himself. Yes, he was all here, all the pieces had been tossed into a single jar, and—
Wait.
He checked again. While his pieces were all back, he wasn’t complete. He had lost mass somewhere.
Suspicion settled on the sharp object. He investigated the needle, poking and jabbing at it as anger and curiosity battled for dominance. It was hollow, meaning it could have been used to extract part of his goo. Righteous indignation struck him—it was bad enough they’d trapped and frozen him, but taking a piece of him? He was very attached to his pieces, actually! Keeping track of all his pieces was somewhat more than a hobby to him, he regularly split himself into fractions, sometimes very numerous fractions, and there was a pretty decent chunk of him now just… gone!
Link shoved the glass again, simmering in annoyance. It was totally solid, clear so he could see out into the lab beyond. The equipment was rather shoddy—there were drips and puddles of greenish goo on the floor. The rage grew, making his body ripple in color since he couldn’t form a frown. They not only stole pieces of him, but they were so careless and wasteful with it! He tried to call the goo back, but it remained inert. It had no will in it, making it as useless as a fleshy limb that had been chopped off. Link slammed against the glass. He was furious! And sad! And he wanted to know why he had been jarred up like this!
Link took a breath, or something akin to it, and looked again. The needle connected to a long, drippy hose, which went over a pile of crates and fell out of sight. There was no one in view, just a desk with jars and decanters and a few books. He swirled a moment, then felt a little laugh form in his throat. Unconscious, he could be sucked up through the needle off to wherever the mystery captor wanted. But awake? Well, his slime went where he wanted.
He dubiously looked at the needle. It was a very tight fit, but being tiny was his specialty. With some steeling of his nerves, he began to force himself through the tiny hole at the end of the needle, drawing himself willingly up into the tubing. It was not pleasant, and the narrow hose left little room for any sense except touch. After wriggling for what felt like an eternity, he finally felt what he was looking for: an improperly sealed joint where two hoses connected. He pushed his way out, puddling on the floor a few minutes in exhaustion before finally rising up and forming his feet. His kinstones were gone—they weren’t still in the tank, so they must have been removed before getting tossed in. The lab was in an old stone building—possibly the Wind Tower or whatever it had been called. Link eyed the glassware on the table before an instinct as deeply ingrained in his soul as the urge to help overtook him: the desire to smash pots. He swept everything off the desk with a single swipe. The crash and splash ruined all the mad science notes in one efficient move.
Something behind him giggled.
Link spun, flickering some red in his ears in an approximation of a blush. A small figure in a second glass cylinder was watching him, face pressed to the glass so hard his features were smashed flat. Unlike Link’s canister, this one was full of another liquid, which the small figure seemed to be floating in. Another slime monster. They were a soft dark blue-purple—indigo, he corrected himself—and about a fourth his size. Because they were so small they could form a humanoid shape even within the confines of the glass. And their shape was… very familiar.
“Who are you?”
The slime monster popped his face free of the glass, grinning with teeth that were a bit too sharp. “I’m the hero, Link!” They tried to strike a heroic pose, but their spindly elbows only smushed along the edge of their prison. “Who are you?”
Link considered a lie—this thing was not him, and didn’t seem to recognize him as the real deal—and even just running away. But instead he moved closer, putting a hand on the glass. The smaller him lunged, trying to bite at it playfully and scrambling at the glass with hands that couldn’t fully form and giggling excitedly the whole while. Link winced. This was… this was made of his slime. He was sure of it, as sure as he had been that the puddles were him. But while the puddles lacked a will, this thing… had its own will? His mind flashed dizzily back to his grandfather explaining how slime monsters were born—he had blocked most of that out, honestly—but he hadn’t included anything about needles or creepy and poorly made labs in that explanation. So this wasn’t his child. He was kind of glad, as he wasn’t ready to be a father for sure.
“Do we get to go out and play again?” The little him stared. Link blinked at him.
“Out..?”
“Earlier he let me out, so I could play with you!” Little him snickered. “I even got to practice my shapeshuffling!”
“Shape…shifting?”
“Yeah! Yeah! I saw you make yourself split up, and so I got to try lots of different things! I got kinda tired, he says I’m not really big enough to be on my own yet, but I can still do this!” He attempted to morph his features, but the end result was drippy and vague. “See? See, I look like a Boko now!”
Link thought back to the things he had chased through the village, but he couldn’t quite recall. Whatever had been mixed into his goo had been pretty potent, it seemed. Had all of them been this… this other him? The slime was tiny, a baby at best! Sure, he was small, but this… and what about the needle, that had been extracting his goo? He could see now it fed into the tank holding the smaller him. Were they trying to donate his slime to make the little one grow? Was this some sort of weird hospital for under-developed slime monsters? But they had effectively kidnapped him to get him here—
The small him smushed himself against the glass again. “Hey. Hey! Are we playing or what?”
Whatever. The kid was a slime and was also somehow his slime.
“Yes. We’re gonna get you out of here, ok?” He looked around for a release for the tank. The only one he saw had a large padlock, holding it in place. Even attempting to reform his hand into a key failed. The kid didn’t have the control he did—trying to climb back up the needle tube would not work. “I’m gonna have to bust you out.”
The tiny him’s eyes lit up. “Yes. Random destruction!”
Link picked up the chair by the desk, grimacing at the weight. “You need to make yourself really flat against the bottom, ok? Getting splattered is not fun.”
“Not fun.” The small slime echoed as he sunk to the bottom of the tank, doing his best impression of a pancake. Even that was only somewhat passable—he was still humanoid in outline. Link hefted the chair.
“Ah ah ah! I see our hero is up and about.”
He twisted, the chair glancing off the tube and falling from his hand as his torso contorted to let him look behind him. A man in a dirty white coat grinned at him from the doorway. His greasy violet hair covered one eye. “Do you like my little shadow slime, hero? I must thank you for donating so much material to me to work with.”
“Vaati.” The name came out as a hiss. Link knew this man—a scientist whose irritating and dangerous experiments were only slightly more dangerous and irritating than his crush on Zelda. He had tried all sorts of things to impress her, getting annoyed when Link kept getting in the way. “What do you mean, ‘donating’?”
“You’re a reckless fighter, Link. Every drop of slime spilled by one of my creations, every stray glob stuck when you wriggled through a hole to a smaller size… I’ve had such fun collecting them all!”
“Ew. I knew you were a creepy stalker, but that’s just gross.” He formed a sword from his goo, letting it harden like steel. “And you made a kid out of it? Surely even a freak like you can see that won’t—“
Vaati waved a hand. “All I had to do was get enough of you corrupted into this new form. Little Shadow here has no interest in hoarding princesses from me. If I killed you, she would mourn you, she would hate me… but if you suddenly became disinterested… well.” His smug grin split his face.
“That’s the most insane thing I think I’ve ever heard.” Four tilted his head to one side. “Also, you have got to stop monologuing.”
A second Link sprung up from the floor behind Vaati. He had sloughed off a glob of goo while very flashily forming his sword, letting the piece slink unnoticed between Vaati’s ankles. Vaati tried to turn, but the blue-tinged Link formed a hammer from his slime, clobbering the scientist across the head. Vaati went down like an inflatable in a power outage (Four wasn’t sure what that meant, but it felt apt). The small him crowed in excitement.
Link turned back to the tank, examining it. He didn’t even flinch as his blue aspect schlorped back into the main body. “Ok buddy… so I guess I should start by introducing myself, huh?”
The small him blinked. “You’re me, aren’t you?”
“More or less.” Link let his sword dissolve. “I’m Link, the hero. And you’re… made from me? But you’re not like the me I just made. It’s part of me, and even when I’m apart I can kinda tell where all of me is.”
“But you can’t feel me?” The mini-him grinned. “That’s how I could trick you!”
“Yep. We aren’t the same, so I guess that makes us, like…” He looked him over. “Brothers.”
The small him almost vibrated in excitement. “What’s a brother?”
“It’s someone who…” He didn’t actually have brothers. He had other hims, and Zelda, and Grandpa. “… who plays with you, and who takes care of you?”
The mini him stared with huge eyes. “So if I’m your brother, I get to leave the lab and play with you?”
“Yep! You’re too small to be on your own. Plus, uh, I can’t just leave a piece of me here with jerks like Vaati around.” He picked the chair back up. “So, take two. Let’s get you out of there—“
He saw the kid’s eyes go wide a second before the blow hit him, a blast of concentrated wind magic that sent him splattering across the room. Link groaned inwardly. It hurt, to be split involuntarily. His will didn’t automatically suffuse every piece, but tended to get a bit scattered throughout all the blobs. Worse, it was a pain to find all himself and pull it back together. Vaati, head bleeding, cackled.
“How nice! So much extra matter to experiment with!”
“Hey! Leave him alone!” The small him flung himself against the glass. Vaati waved a hand absently, grabbing a beaker. Link wriggled faster. Vaati capturing bits of him would make it harder to reform. He didn’t have a lot to spare, and he had already put so much into the kid—
“No! Let him go!” The kid flailed. Vaati sniffed.
“Stop making such a ruckus. I saved your life just now. If he’d broken that tube you’d fall apart.”
“Nuh-uh! I… I could go out and play earlier!”
“And nearly melted from the effort. That vat is the only thing keeping you alive right now.” Vaati dropped another handful of Link’s essence into a beaker. “You’ll be whole soon enough. Plenty of bits of hero here to use.”
Link had about a fourth of himself together now. He struggled to keep collecting before Vaati did, struggling to his feet. Grim determination colored his body like a bruise, violet light glinting off the shaking sword. Vaati rolled his eyes.
“Another vain attempt at attack? You won’t trick me again—“
“Nooo!” The small him flung himself forward a final time. The edge of the tube, which had cracked when the chair had bounced off it, finally shattered, sending the liquid and slime monster pouring out. Vaati turned, but the small Link was on him in a moment, attacking and tearing and trying to consume the wizard. Vaati took a staggering step back, tripping over the fallen chair and fell, his head cracking sickeningly on the edge of a crate. He hit the floor, going limp.
Link staggered forward as the small him stood, shaking. “I… I did it.” He smiled, all sharp teeth. “I got him…” The small him suddenly slumped. Link lunged, catching him before he splattered to the floor. “Don’t feel so…”
He was too small. And he was destabilizing. Link held him close. “I-it’s ok buddy. You got him.”
The small Link buried his face into Link’s tunic. “Good. That was… that was a… fun game…”
Link reformed in silence, but he didn’t hear anything else.
—
“Link!” Zelda rushed to check on him as he walked into the throne room, ignoring the proper decorum as she threw her arms around him. “I was so worried!”
“Sorry, Zel. It… it ended up taking longer than I thought.” He had dark circles under his eyes, the purple reflecting off the normal green making them seem even starker. “I got everything settled. The beasts are driven out, the guy causing the problem is arrested, and I… am so tired.”
She poked at him, giggling with pent-up nerves as her pink slime tried to shift and cover a tired sheen of purple. “You vanish for a week and think that’s enough explanation? Think again!” She tugged him into a side hall, waving off her father’s concerned gaze. Link didn’t fight back. His feet stuck to the floor; he really was tired and holding himself together was exhausting. He wanted to go home and dump himself into a tub and sleep for another week, but that clearly wasn’t happening. Zelda spun, putting her hands on her hips. “What really happened?”
“What do you mean?” He yawned, letting his face stretch further than normal. “It was… just a lot.”
“I’ve known you too long for that to fool me!” Her glare softened, and she helped him sit on a bench. “Link, please. You can tell me.”
“Vaati was there.” He stared at his feet, which dripped slightly to the floor. Zelda squeaked in surprise. “He had set up a lab, was trying to make a monster to. Uh.”
“Make me fall for him?” Her tone was disgusted, shooting her slime through with faint blue. Link squeezed her hand.
“He was trying to use me to make it.” Link’s gaze hollowed out, staring at nothing. “To get me out of the way.”
“… oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
They both looked at the ground.
“Did you… did you have to kill it?” Her hand shook, thinking of the implications. “A piece of you… it must have been like…”
“I didn’t have to kill it.” His voice wobbled. “I didn’t, it–he–was very young, and he attacked Vaati himself. He was too young, Zel. He didn’t know better.”
“... I’m sorry.” She looked down again, then suddenly leaned forward. “Link..? Your… your shoes.”
“Hm? Oh, yeah. He does that.” Link sighed deeply, reaching down and grabbing the boot in question, pulling it up rather than off. The boot, which had been turning a dusky indigo, squelched and reformed into a hood, attached to a small face that was grinning in excitement. “Zel, meet my new brother, Shadow.”
“Link.” Zelda’s eyes were locked on the small boy wriggling to separate himself from the rest of Link. “Link, why is—“
“I told you, he’s too young. He’s having to piggy-back in my slime till he grows a bit.” Link leaned back, groaning. “I gotta eat more, I gotta sleep more, I gotta get more sun. Since he was made in a lab he’s not got a parent to take care of him, and since he came from me, I feel responsible.” He shrugged. Shadow was clinging to his legs, staring at Zelda with wide eyes.
“Link was right, you are the prettiest slime in the world.”
Zelda laughed as Link rippled red with embarrassment, trying to shove Shadow back into the slime. “You’ve only seen me and her and a gross magician, don’t say weird stuff—“
“But you said it!” Shadow clasped his hands. “We’re going to see Zelda! Zelda is sooo smart and nice and pretty, Shadow! Zelda is the best, Shadow!’”
“I don’t sound like that!”
“You sound exactly like that!” Shadow vanished into Link’s slime, reemerging from his back and making kissy noises as Link swatted at him. Zelda couldn’t suppress a laugh, making Link turn even redder.
“You really are just like brothers!” She patted Shadow on the head, making him giggle. “Clearly, he’s the fun brother.”
