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Supes asked: link raised by the greater lost woods scrub community
I’m going to pretend this means “Link Raised By Business Scrubs AU”
(your way sounds like OoT AU and mine is more along the lines of “Woodfall’s really the only part I’ve played in my Majora’s Mask attempts so far…” but also Ocarina of Time and generic no-game AU and trading sequences from Oracle games)
oh I found my notes and the summary for this fic is: “Raised in the forest by Business Scrubs AU. Link has 99 problems, and the fate of Hyrule ain’t one of them.”
—
Link stands in Castle Town’s square, in his new boots, and tugs at the belt of his new tunic. The tunic is green, which is one of two things going for it. The second thing is, the tunic is a leaving-home-to-seek-his-fortune gift from his parents.
Link’s parents are two of the best business scrubs in the swamp, and they procured the tunic for him especially. They said, this sort of clothes will make a good impression on the Hylians in Castle Town. The perfect thing for a young scrub aiming for the town’s highest honor, the recently-vacated and highly-coveted deku flower positioned squarely in the Hyrule king’s courtyard.
Link misses his old clothes made of proper leaves. He misses bare feet in swamp mud, and his own tiny deku flower next to his parents’. He’s never been away from home, out of the swamps, before. He misses his parents.
He’s going to make them proud, though.
Link needs business.
—
Even on court days at the Deku Palace, Link’s never seen so many people all bustling around in one place. And they’re all Hylians, jostling past him, all big and tall and not bothering to look down. Like all scrubs, Link’s rather tinier than Hylians.
He fingers his deku seed pouch and thinks he better start small, then.
It’s a bit less crowded by the fountain, and that’s where Link sees his first customer. Dead ahead of him, a straight, clear shot, is a Hylian that’s not much bigger than he is.
Link raises his slingshot and lets fly.
It’s a perfect shot. The deku seed pings off his customer’s shoulder, and the small Hylian yelps, and stops, and turns to—
There’s blood in Link’s mouth and all the air squished out of him. He’s face-first in the cobblestones, he realizes, as he’s being hauled to his feet with his arms twisted behind him. It hurts, until he stops struggling and fighting and throwing himself around so much and stands still instead.
Someone shakes him, once. “How dare you hit the—”
“What do you mean by standing in the square throwing rocks at people?” Link’s eyes cross a bit as he stares at the finger his customer is pointing an inch from his nose. “You’ll hurt somebody! Don’t you know any better?”
Link does know better, and that’s why he’s not throwing rocks. But he’s a business scrub, and everyone knows business scrubs spit seeds when they’re nervous. Anyway, he’s got his proper business permit and everything.
His customer reaches into Link’s pocket, pulls out his permit, and makes a great show of reading it. There’s a lot of hmmming, and chin-rubbing, and glancing between the paper and Link. Then they stick it back in his pocket.
“He’s telling the truth,” his customer says. “Let him go, Impa. But!” and there’s the finger practically poking his nose again, “This is your last warning! Don’t go hitting my people with seeds anymore. Use your voice like everybody else.”
Link offers to sell her the rest of the deku seeds in his pouch for 50 rupees, to ensure he can’t hit anyone else with them, but his customer doesn’t bite.
—
Link’s not really sure he even wants the deku flower in the Hyrule king’s castle. He wants to make his parents proud, of course. And he wants to be a good business scrub. But he’s not sure he wants to sit in the flower, day after day, and try to sell any Hylians that walk by some deku seeds, or deku sticks, or deku nuts.
Link bets he can do a lot more business if he goes to his customers instead and finds out what they want to buy from him.
It’s already working. He hasn’t even been in Castle Town a whole week and he’s already written a letter home about all the business he’s done. One of his customers was a palace guard who wanted a mask. Link found a Keaton mask, but the Hylian who had it turned out to be a customer as well, because they would only hand the mask over if Link found them a weird mushroom. And in the forest where the mushrooms grow—and then—and there’d been a wooden cucco and an oil can and a vase all the way from the Gorons in Death Mountain—and the milk bottle he’d used to put the poe soul in—and—
When he goes off to mail his second letter home for the week, the postman leans over the counter to ask him if he can lay his hands on a new clock. Customers are coming to Link now, without him even having a deku flower. This job, he thinks, is the best job.
—
The second day that Link is in Castle Town, he sees his first customer in the square again. He doesn’t slingshot a seed this time. Instead, he runs up and asks what she’d buy from him, if he had it.
“The Triforce of the goddesses that dwells in the Sacred Realm,” says Zelda.
Link frowns. That’s just an old story, and she’s just trying to make him leave. But he’s not going to. It’s a challenge now.
She’s his first real customer, and Link’s not going to stop looking until he gets the thing she wants to buy.
—
Link learns that his customer is a Hylian girl, and Hylian girls like jewelry. So when a Gerudo customer trades Link a wide golden bracelet, he hurries to show it to Zelda first.
She’s standing on top of the gate to the Hyrule king’s castle, when he finds her, staring out at the departing Gerudo entourage with narrowed eyes. “What? No, I don’t… If you had the Triforce of the goddesses, then I’d…” She doesn’t even glance at the bracelet as she pushes Link’s hand gently away.
—
The Hyrule king’s castle is just as easy to sneak into as the Deku Palace. Link’s not there to make any mischief, of course—he’s just curious to see the highly-coveted fiercely-contested deku flower in the courtyard. To see if he likes it. With all the business he’s doing and all the customers he’s satisfied, maybe the Hyrule king will have a good impression of Link by now and consider him for the position.
If Link likes the flower.
Link doesn’t expect to find Impa sneaking into the castle too. But there she is. Link’s never really looked at her much—even though she apologized for shoving him to the ground on his first day in Castle Town, and she’s been kind to him ever since—because usually she’s with his first customer Zelda.
Today it’s just Impa.
Today Link realizes that Impa’s face looks like a customer’s face.
So of course, he goes over and asks what she’s looking for.
Impa laughs, but it’s not her usual one. “Well, the Master Sword and the goddesses’ chosen hero would do for a start. What are you even doing in the castle, Link? You shouldn’t be here.”
She escorts him out. Link doesn’t know much about heroes. What he does know, of course, is that everyone’s heard of the legendary Master Sword, hidden away in the woods in a pedestal of stone to sleep forever. Link also knows it’s true.
He saw it when he was looking for those mysterious mushrooms.
The next afternoon, on his way back to Castle Town and dragging the too-long sword through the leaf litter behind him, Link thinks Impa is going to be really pleased.