Chapter 1: The One Who Got Split
May I introduce the Hero(es) of Light?
Disclaimer goes here. Not that I'm going to actually put one here, because you all know I don't own LoZ. And if for some reason you thought I did; what kind of rock do you live under?
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On AO3 | On FF.net
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The point which Nayru specified, at the very end of the timeline which doubled as what is generally known as the 'present', was inhabited by an aspect of Courage who, due to a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances, was operating as himself divided into different bodies. This was because of an item called the Four Sword; a rather uncreatively named weapon that did exactly what it's name said – split its wielder into four people. Link, being both the wielder and the local Courage aspect, was now effectively four different boys named Green, Blue, Vio, and Red.
Perhaps it was a naming trend of their particular time, but their names were equally as uncreative as their swords'. Red was named as such because his clothes were red. Blue had been so entitled because his clothes were blue. Green wore green, and Vio wore purple. It could be a matter of interest to note that Vio, unlike his counterparts, had a fairly original name if one thought about it, but the reality was that he had simply refused to be named 'Purple' and 'Violet' had sounded like a girl's name. Regardless, he had the unique distinction of having a nickname for his nickname.
None of them chose to comment much on their given titles though, because Red had been the one to come up with them. And if there was one thing that was extremely difficult to do, it was to turn Red down. He had a startlingly accurate Adorable Puppy face, and it was the great misfortune of Vio, Green, and Blue to have a severe weakness to adorable puppies. As a result, the names went uncontested.
The matter of names, however, was of very little consequence as far as the four Links were concerned. In part, this was because at this point, they just didn't care anymore, but most of the reason came from the fact that finally, finally, they were on their way to rescue Princess Zelda.
She was their childhood friend, as Link's father was the Captain of the Royal Guard and as such Link and Zelda had spent a good amount of time together when they were younger. Link may have even had a small crush at some point – before Vaati had kidnapped her, that is. Then Shadow Link had appeared, Link had drawn the Four Sword, the crush had probably gotten lost somewhere among the dividing of his base personality into four separate bodies, and after a lotof issues between his new selves they'd eventually gotten themselves on track and... mostly working together.
Case in point, they were currently climbing the exhaustingly tall mountain that Vaati had made his lair atop of, and were passing the time in their usual fashion.
That is to say, arguing.
“All I'm saying,” Blue said, “is that my swordsmanship is clearly better than yours.”
“According to what parameters?” Vio replied dryly.
“I kill more things than you.”
“You hack and slash at your target with all the precision of a brick,” Vio retorted. “I, on the other hand, fight with finesse.”
“Isn't that an illness?” Blue asked, aiming to rile his counterpart up. Unfortunately for him, Green chose that moment to intervene.
“Both of you, stop it!” he snapped. “You both fight fine! Now shut up and concentrate on climbing, because the sooner we get to the top the sooner we can get Zelda back.”
Green had - at some point during their adventure, nobody was quite sure when – established himself as the de facto leader of their little group. Most of the time he did a pretty good job, and this was the reason that Blue reluctantly obeyed and settled for grumbling to himself instead, while Vio simply crossed his arms.
Red walked behind Green and in front of Blue and Vio, smiling to himself and humming happily. While at first a dispute like this one would have alarmed him, by now he was used to his counterparts' antics and could easily tell whether or not a conflict was serious.
They all walked in silence for a while, except for the occasional heavy breath from someone. They were by no means out of shape, but climbing a mountain was strenuous for the obvious reason that it was a mountain. You don't just climb those things and not get out of breath. That's inhuman.
However, since the four boys were in fact Hylian, they were naturally exempt from this rule and reached the peak with no problems whatsoever.
The top of the mountain had the typical villainous color scheme, with dark rocks and overcast clouds. Why exactly all villains needed overcast clouds was a mystery to them, but it just seemed like something villains did.
The problem with this particular villainous lair, however, was that it appeared to lack the villain.
“...Shouldn't Vaati be here?” Red asked after surveying the area and finding a distinct lack of large purple bat. “Did we climb the wrong mountain?”
“No, this is the right mountain,” Vio replied, although he was already poring over their map to be absolutely sure. “This is definitely the right mountain.”
It was also, as a point of interest, the only mountain.
“Well then...” Green said slowly. “Let's investigate.”
Instinct honed by getting attacked by multiple unpleasant things multiple times grouped them together as they carefully advanced onto the center of the peak. There was no sign of Vaati; in fact, there was no sign of anybody. Considering that Vaati had been supposedly holding Princess Zelda with him, this was a concerning situation. The four of them exchanged glances and, on an unspoken signal, spread out across the mountaintop to cover more ground.
Of course, since this only lasted for about ten seconds, it was worth wondering whether it'd even been relevant as Red came sprinting back the way he'd came yelling, “GUYS! GUYS! GUUUUUUYYYYYYYS!”
“WHAT!?” Blue bellowed, racing to his brother's (supposed) defense. “WHAT'S HAPPENING AND WHO NEEDS PUNCHING!?”
“Guys, I almost fell in a hole!” Red gasped.
Immediately, his three fellow Heroes dropped their guard and frowned at him.
“Red, that's not exactly emergency material,” Green said.
“Certainly not 'sprint back this way and scream about it' material,” Vio agreed. “What have we told you about overreacting?”
“That it's usually not as bad as I think it is and I should wait and get the whole story before panicking,” Red recited. “But guys, I'm being serious! There's this hole in the air and it's really big!”
Vio blinked. “It's in the what?”
“How can it be in the air?” Blue asked, confused. “Can air even have holes?”
“I dunno, but it's big and black and it's floating and I almost walked straight into it.”
“...Show us,” Green decided.
“It's really weird,” Red continued as he led the way across the rocks. “It's like it just cuts off the whole mountaintop and there's this empty stuff there instead.”
“Red, that's impossible,” Vio informed him. “Empty voids don't just happen in the middle of an atmosphere, and there's nothing in Hyrule that could cause a – Sweet Din that's an empty void.”
He stared at the impossible rift blankly as his brain devoted all the processing power to processing and comprehending what his eyes were insisting was there. It went against every physics textbook he'd ever read.
“See?” Red said. “Empty void. Weird, right?”
Green took a cautious step forward, eyes narrowed. “Yeah... really weird. It's bizarre, actually. It's like gravity doesn't even effect it.”
This was in fact one of the reasons why Vio was having such a hard time accepting it, as defying gravity was one of those things that went against all the previously mentioned physics textbooks. There had to be some sort of thrust for it to be doing what it was doing, but it was a void, which meant that it couldn't have thrust because the inherent nature of the void meant that it was pulling instead, which meant that defying gravity ought to, by all means, be impossible.
Except for the fact that it clearly wasn't.
Blue frowned at the hole, stooped down, and scooped up a small rock laying near his feet. He tossed it in his hand a couple times, then lobbed the stone with all his might.
The stone proceeded to completely vanish from all existence. Everyone's jaws dropped.
“Okay,” Green said. “Nobody touch the hole.”
His three brothers nodded stunned agreement.
“...This still doesn't explain where Vaati is, though,” Blue pointed out after a moment. “Or Zelda, for that matter.”
“You don't think she fell in, do you?” Red worried. “I mean, I almost did...”
“Alright, split up,” Green ordered. “Look for Zelda, and keep an eye out for Vaati in the meantime. Don't do anything stupid, and for the love of the Sacred Realm don't try to take on Vaati alone.”
He paused, then added, “That means you, Blue.”
Blue snorted. “What do you take me for, a kitten or something? I can totally take Vaati if I tried.”
As he said this, however, Green fixed him with one of his Leader's Stares, which were specifically designed to make the target reconsider their words and think about the more important things, like cheese, the lifespan of a wombat, and how painfully his leader would bring him back to life and kill him again if he ever did something so abysmally stupid as to get himself killed in the first place. Faced with this look, Blue did the smart thing and amended his previous statement with, “I promise I won't do anything stupid without thinking about it first.”
Green glared at him. “You mean you won't do anything stupid at all.”
“I make no promises.”
Green pegged him with another glare, then subsided since he knew that was about as good of a acceptance from Blue as he was going to get.
“Just stay safe, okay guys?” he sighed.
“Yes mother,” Vio said, smirking before jogging off in a randomly but probably very scientifically chosen direction. Red, on the other hand, beamed earnestly and carefully gave the hole a wide berth before heading off in a different direction. And Blue, after subtly checking that Green was over their little issue (he was), set off as well.
Green took a deep breath, faced the last remaining directional option, and, hoping that his siblings would be alright, stepped forward.
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“Princess?” Vio asked softly, pushing his way through some small, scraggly, and somehow-not-dead-yet trees on the far side of the mountaintop. “Are you here?”
The only thing he received in reply was his echo.
Vio sighed and ran a hand through his bangs. He'd really thought there was a good chance she'd be in here, perhaps hiding from Vaati after a cleverly constructed escape. He wouldn't put it past her; she was, after all, extraordinarily clever.
After another minute spent scouring the thin growth for signs of life, Vio gave up and moved on – or rather, he tried to. Unnoticed by him until it was far too late, one of the scraggly branches of the trees had become hooked in the fabric of his hat. When Vio moved away, his hat noticeably did not follow him.
Vio's first reaction to having his hat removed by an outside force was to automatically assumed Vaati was attacking, and his resulting response carved a deep slice into three different trees and cleared all the shrubbery within a five-foot radius. It did not, however, dislodge his hat.
Once he realized what had happened, Vio spent a moment being thankful that none of his brothers had been there to see his embarrassing display, then reached up and attempted to tug his hat free.
'Attempted' being the operative word, because his hat remained firmly stuck.
Vio's mouth tugged into a frown, and he gave his hat a sharper pull. Nothing happened. He looked around for a moment, rolled over a dead stump, and stood on the wood to try and disentangle the fabric that way. The problem was that, in his earlier tugging, he'd firmly trapped his hat around the wood in the process.
Vio's frown turned into a full-blown scowl. Yes, Zelda was important, and yes, if she ever found out about this he would probably get into somuch trouble.
But this tree had messed with his hat. This had just gotten personal.
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Blue scratched behind his ear absently as he poked around in the rocks. He still hoped, sort of, that he would find Vaati and be able to smack the living daylights out of him for everything he'd put them through. He had many reasons for wanting this, one of which was bad judgement. But another, much more sensible one was that he was the best fighter of the group, and if anyone stood a chance facing Vaati alone, it was him. He would much rather get ambushed himself than have it be Red.
He would rather have a lot of things happen if it wouldn't happen to Red. Then again, he would rather have a lot of things happen if it wouldn't happen to Green or Vio either.
“Geez I'm sappy,” Blue muttered to himself, poking around more rocks. One of said rocks, upon being poked, let out a startled squeal (which Blue matched, not that he would ever admit that to anyone) and uncurled to reveal itself to be a sleepily-blinking Bokoblin, who promptly attempted to run Blue through the stomach. Blue returned the favor by chopping off the creature's arm.
The bokoblin shrieked, which, considering it had just lost a limb, was a perfectly reasonable response. But the other reason for the shriek made itself known as several other monsters poked their heads out from under, behind, and over the field of rocks and scurried to join the fight.
Blue blinked once, slowly, and it occurred to him that he'd just stumbled onto what was probably Vaati's monster army, which finally explained where all the minions had come from in all those temples. A slow grin spread across his face.
“You wanna play, huh?” he asked, casually raising his sword and sliding his shield off his back in the same smooth motion. “Alright. Let's play.”
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After searching a couple alcoves and surveying the general area, Green concluded that the only thing inhabiting this section of the mountain other than himself were rocks and a few small lizards with exceedingly bad judgement in home locations. He let out a frustrated huff of air and stalked off to find out how the others were doing. In the distance, he could see Vio struggling with... a tree?
That seemed interesting, Green decided, and kicked his pace up into a jog, arriving at his destination a few moments later.
“Why are you losing a game of tug-of-war to a tree?” he asked in an amused tone, causing Vio to jump a good six inches into the air in surprise.
“Because,” Vio grunted, pulling, “it's a very tough and scraggly tree and my hat is very stuck to it, and I'm afraid that if I pull too hard I'll rip the fabric.”
Green winced at the thought of a ripped hat. “Well... have you tried better leverage?”
The look Vio gave him was drier than a desert. “Of course I tried better leverage. That was the first thing I tried. Who do you take me for, Blue?”
“Hey, Blue's pretty smart,” Green argued. “He just puts it towards swordplay and things.”
“Yeah, I know,” Vio conceded. “Now, have you got any better suggestions?”
Green took a step backwards and surveyed the tree. While it was quite short, twisted, and knobbly, it was also just tall enough that getting Vio's hat back was a piece of work. But because it was short, twisted, and knobbly, it was also a fantastic climbing tree.
“I'm gonna see if I can get at it from above,” Green decided, and set about doing just that. He got up the trunk and onto the branch just fine, but on his way out to the hat's location his leg slipped, sending him sliding towards the ground – until the strap that held his scabbard on his back got caught on a large protruding knob in the bark.
Green now found himself dangling about five feet off the ground, held up by a piece of equipment that he couldn't reach and a piece of tree that he couldn't break. Flailing proved to be of no use either, as it only resulted in him swinging a bit. He finally gave up after a few minutes and just let himself hang limply.
“Little help?” he asked plaintively.
Vio, in between snickers, reached up and gave Green's leg a strong tug – only to have Green's boot come off his foot instead and smack him in the face. Vio went down hard with a bruise on his forehead, and Green was left with a rapidly-getting-cold foot and a significant lack of a way down.
And through it all, Vio's hat hadn't budged.
“This tree is an evil mastermind,” Green muttered.
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Unlike the others, Red was having a nicely uneventful search. The hole scared him, for obvious reasons, so he was basically looking wherever was farthest away from it.
Ironically enough, this turned out to be the right idea as he found Zelda sealed inside a crystal prison, floating serenely an inch or two off the ground at the very highest point on the mountain. Her eyes were shut, and if it weren't for the fact that she was being held against her will, Red would have assumed she was sleeping while standing up.
None of this, however, dampened Red's natural enthusiasm, and he let out an exuberant squeal at the sight of his missing Princess.
“Zelda! You're okay!”
He rushed up to the crystal and gave it a hug. But despite this adorable display of affection, Zelda abjectly failed to respond.
This might have been due to the solid rock she was stuck inside, but really it could have been any number of things.
Red noticed this about ten seconds into the hug, and his eyebrows furrowed in worry. “Zelda? Can you hear me?”
Zelda proceeded to do absolutely nothing.
Red reached out and tapped on the crystal, producing a pleasant tinknoise, but getting no other response. He frowned. Clearly this was in the way of Zelda being free... the question was, how did he release her?
“Hold still,” he warned her. Since she was already doing this, it wasn't much of a problem. She could have been a champion in musical statues.
Red drew his sword and carefully poked the stone with it, producing a louder tink but not much else. He tried again, harder this time. The tink turned into a tinnnnnggg, but that was about the only difference.
Now getting mildly annoyed that he couldn't free the Princess, Red began slashing at the crystal in earnest. Aside from making a lot of musically pleasant bell noises, which inadvertently ended up playing the 'You Got The Thing!' jingle that always popped up whenever they got a new item, nothing happened.
Red spent a few minutes cycling through his other items, which ranged from blasting it with fire and ice to just knocking his head against it in sheer frustration, before it occurred to him that Vio would probably know what to do.
With this thought in mind, Red bounced down the mountain's peak yelling, “GUYS, GUYS, GUUYYYYYS!” at the top of his lungs.
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Blue was on the winning streak of his life.
When he'd stumbled onto Vaati's minion army, he'd stumbled onto allof Vaati's minion army. Everything that he and his counterparts hadn't already killed in some dungeon or another was literally right here practically begging to be chopped to pieces, and Blue was all too happy to oblige. He was already in the eighties somewhere – the Keese he'd just killed made eighty-four – which blew his previous record of fifty-seven straight out of the water, and to his delight the enemies didn't seem inclined to stop anytime soon.
“This is the best day ever,” he decided with a massive, slightly concerning grin on his face.
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Vio, rubbing his head with one hand and trying to re-shoe Green's foot with the other, slowly became aware of the fact that someone was yelling for him quite loudly. In fact, it was getting louder and louder the longer that he listened-
Red came barreling through the trees, saw his brothers just a few seconds too late, and skidded straight into Vio's legs knocking them booth head over heels and giving Vio another collection to bruises to add to the one on his head.
“...Ow,” he decided once the world stopped moving.
“Oh gosh Vio I'm so sorry I should have been looking where I was going you're not hurt are you please say you're not hurt if you're hurt then I don't know what I'm going to do and-”
“Red,” Vio interrupted. “I'm fine. Stop panicking.”
Red duly stopped panicking.
“What was it you wanted Vio about?” Green asked, still hanging from the tree. Red opened his mouth to answer, but his brain kicked into gear at that exact moment and noted the fact that Green was in a tree.
As a result, what actually came out of his mouth was the perfectly on topic, “Why are you in a tree?”
Green turned pink. “...I'm stuck.”
“He was helping me rescue my hat,” Vio elaborated. “He slipped while climbing out on the branch and his scabbard strap's caught.”
“Oh,” Red said. “What happened to your hat?”
“It's in the tree,” Green sighed.
“Oh,” Red said again.
“Actually...” Vio mused in the tone that he used when he had an idea. “Red, can you get on my shoulders and reach my hat?”
“Sure!” Red chirped. Vio got down on his knees and Red awkwardly clambered over his head to his shoulders. Vio then stood up (though not without a good bit of wobbling, as this wasn't something they tended to do), and with the added height boost Red was able to reach out and finally disentangle Vio's hat from the branch.
“Thanks,” Vio said gratefully as he re-placed the garment on his head where it firmly belonged. A Link without his snazzy hat of snazziness had no snazz. Obviously.
Green let out a sigh of relief at the rescue and just let himself hang for a minute. Then he lifted his head and, with a sheepish smile, said, “Can someone get me down now?”
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Blue disarmed the final Armos (Hah! Pun!), and the monster crumpled to dust, leaving Blue the only living thing in a sea of a clean freak's worst nightmare. He let out a small, contented sigh, which stirred up the still-settling dust from his victory.
After much trial and tribulation, he'd finally set his new record streak: two-hundred and forty-six kills. In a row.
This was worth celebrating, he decided.
The only problem seemed to be that there was nobody around to help celebrate it with him. This made Blue frown a bit, as he could only remember being completely separated from his siblings a handful of times – as in, he could literally count them on one hand – and he didn't remember why they hadn't been fighting with him. Come to think of it, why had he been fighting?
And why was he on a mountain?
As this thought ran through his head, Blue abruptly realized that this was Vaati's mountain. And with that epiphany came the memory of what he was doing there in the first place.
“Aww, crud,” Blue muttered, and took off sprinting.
Vio was never going to let this go if he figured out Blue had somehow managed to forget about Zelda of all people.
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It took pushing, pulling, tugging, shoving, shouting, a very loud crack sound, falling, screaming, thumping, one casualty in a form of a severe grass stain, and a stick. But at the end of the whole mess, Green could, with confidence, say he had both of his feet firmly on the ground.
He also had a strong determination to never let his siblings 'rescue' him ever again, but that was beside the point.
“...Okay,” Green said, partly forcing himself to move on and partly because they actually did need to get back on track. “What did you need, Red?”
Red tilted his head, then jumped about a foot into the air and cried, “I found Zelda!” as he remembered why he'd come in running in the first place. Green and Vio immediately gave him their full attention.
“Where?” Vio said.
“Up on the top of the mountain, the very top. She's in this crystal thing, but I couldn't break it no matter what I tried. I figured Vio would know what to do, so I went looking for you but then your hat was in a tree and Green was in a tree and a lot of things revolved around trees for a while and I got distracted. Sorry.”
“It's fine, we know now,” Green reassured him. “Show us where she is.”
“Hang on,” Vio interrupted, frowning. “Where's Blue?”
Almost as if he heard his name, Blue came skidding around a pile of rocks and screeched to a halt, panting and looking as though he'd just taken a bath in mud. His hair was wildly sticking in various directions and aside from his obvious exertion, his face had a grin so wide it was threatening to escape his face.
“Hi, sorry,” he panted. “Got distracted.”
“Doing what?”
“Oh, things. Two-hundred and forty-six things, if you're interested.”
Almost simultaneously, his three brothers decided they were definitely not interested.
“Moving on,” Green said quickly. “Red found Zelda at the top of the mountain but she's inside a crystal prison like the other six maidens were.”
“Why didn't you say so!?” Blue cried. “We gotta rescue her!”
“We also need to figure out how first,” Vio reminded him dryly. Blue shrugged.
“Simple. I'm gonna hit it with my hammer.”
“Red tried that,” Green informed him. “Well, not with a hammer, exactly, but-”
“None of my items worked,” Red lamented. “Not a single one...”
Blue blinked and put away his hammer. “Okay then... what's the plan?”
“Figure out a plan later,” Green said definitively, and with that marched straight up the path to the top.
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It turned out that they didn't actually need a plan, because Zelda was quite capable of freeing herself. She proved this when the crystal suddenly shattered as the four Links were brainstorming and released the Princess in a shower of light.
“What, you actually thought I was going to sit and be the damsel in distress?” She grinned at their dumbstruck faces. “I've been storing my power for weeks to break out of that thing. Nasty stuff, quartz. No breathability at all.”
“...You're okay, then?” Green asked slowly.
“Yes, I'm fine. Which is more than I can say for you boys.”
Zelda got a concerning look on her face, which was highly reminiscent of Green's leader stare but infinitely worse because it was a Royal leader stare.
“WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, LINK!?” she exploded. “You drew the Four Sword!? How could you put Hyrule in danger like that!? You knew Vaati would be released, I know you knew! But here you are, standing with your four faces and gaping at me like idiots and I honestly thought you knew better, Link. Nothing could possibly be worth what you've unleashed.”
“Not even saving you?” Red asked quietly.
Zelda blinked.
“Shadow Link took you captive and tricked us into drawing the Sword to get you back,” Vio explained. “And then he made sure that we couldn't put it back in time to stop Vaati. We knew that the Four Sword was the only thing that could beat him, so... we just went with it.”
“We came up here to smack the ever loving crud out of him,” Blue said. He paused, then added, “And save you.”
“Oh. Well... I suppose I can accept that,” Zelda sighed. “You always did have a thing about keeping me safe. I suppose your father drove that into you.”
“Uh, Princess?” Vio said, raising his hand. “Just curious, why aren't you freaking out?”
“About what?”
“Well, your childhood friend is now split into four people, for starters...”
“I had to learn all about the Four Sword in my history lessons,” Zelda replied. “I know exactly what it does. I'm rather excited to see it in action, and there's a part of me that reallywants to ask you scientific questions about how it feels, but other than that I'm fine.”
“Okay, but what about the physics-defying hole?” Blue asked.
Zelda blinked. “The what now?”
“That now,” Red said, pointing. Zelda followed his finger to where the hole (now slightly bigger) floated a few inches off the ground, and her jaw dropped.
This lasted for a good minute and a half before Green cleared his throat awkwardly and Zelda was startled out of her thoughts.
“What the heck happened to Vaati!?” she sputtered.
“That was Vaati!?”
“That was where he was, yes...”
Vio frowned. “How do you know that? You were in a crystal.”
“I am able to know what goes on around me,” Zelda said dryly. “You know, since I happen to have magical powers and things.”
Vio closed his mouth awkwardly.
“But Vaati was right there,” Zelda continued, insistent. “I swear by the goddesses that's where he was. I mean, sure he hadn't made any noise in a while, which I thought was kinda odd but maybe he was alseep, you never know. But...”
Everyone stared in silence at the void for a moment.
“...It's bigger than before,” Red noted.
“Which means, if it keeps going, it'll eventually destroy the entire country,” Vio said somberly. “That's not good.”
“Well we can't do anything about it now,” Zelda decided. “So, would you be willing to escort me back to the Castle? We can do some research in the library once we're there and see if there's anything on world-eating holes.”
“Probably the best plan as of now,” Green agreed, sighing. “Follow us, Princess.”
As far as the people of Hyrule were concerned, the Four Sword Heroes coming down from the mountain with the kidnapped Princess was the best thing that'd happened since the discovery of How To Bake A Cucco Without Getting Yourself Killed – which, since Cuccos were known far and wide as the most vicious of beasts, had been heralded as a miracle in itself. But the Links and Zelda had more pressing issues on their minds and as such ignored the festivities altogether.
Hyrule was in danger and they had no idea how to stop it.
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