Chapter Text
Link was soooooo bored of the songs he knew how to play. He turned the ocarina over and over in his hands, staring at it. Then, a hot beat began to form as if all by itself in his head. It was more than a hot beat. It was a pop-beat. It was a roll-beat. And he was never gonna give it up.
Nope. He was going to play it.
He lifted the ocarina of time to his lips and performed the song perfectly in one shot.
And the world began to shift.
Trees grew around him, then fell, and blurs took the wood away, and new trees grew, and grass, and all sorts of shapes and colors moved around him way too fast for him to understand—but he kept playing his song until the last note—because he was never gonna give it up.
When he stopped, so did all the blurs, and he found himself in a world like and yet unlike the one where he’d sat on a tree stump to play his song—in fact, the stump seemed to have grown around him into a massive tree trunk, and sitting across from him inside it was… him? “Huh?” he said.
“What the frick?!” the other him said.
“Come on!” said a higher-pitched voice to his left, and Link snapped his head that way to see a … kid him?! “Why won’t my stick work?!!!?” The boyish version of him flapped a skinny baton wildly through the air with a grumpy grimace.
An object slammed into Link’s back and shoulders with incredible force and a grunt, with a voice that sounded strangely like his own. He hit the floor, his face scraping painfully on the wood, and groaned. “Wh- what?”
“Why’d I land wrong?” the man now on top of him said, his speech slurred and confused.
Link twisted his now-pounding head around to find sandy-blond hair hanging over him. Some got in his mouth. He spit it out (gross)—but as he puffed the hair out of his line of vision, he saw that the tree’s trunk wasn’t just hollow- it was broken, too, with no top, and in the sky above it he saw three creatures flying: two birds and one… dragon? He couldn’t tell if they were close and small or far and huge, but with his luck, huge was probably the answer.
The confused man on his back spoke again. “C’n you get outta myyy way, plz? My grlfriends coming.”
“Who the hell’s your girlfriend?!” Link asked, shoving the dazed man off of him, then feeling pretty guilty since the guy clearly couldn’t even stand on his own. His eyes were crossing.
“Th dragonnnDUH!” the cross-eyed man pointed, not quite straight up, but he made a valiant effort.
Link looked back up only to shriek embarrassingly at the sight of the two birds (yep-HUGE) hurtling toward him. He jumped and rolled aside as they landed hard on the floor of the hollow trunk.
“OKAY,” Link cried, his shoulders now against one side of the trunk and his hip now bruised painfully against the floor. “Who ARE you all?!”
A chorus of “Link!”s erupted (and one “Zelda!”).
Link stared at the Links. “HUH?! No, nooooo, no no-”
“Yes!”
“Yep.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yyyyaeeas.”
“NO,” Link yelled. “You’re getting nicknames, right now!”
“Teaaarrrss,” said the guy suffering on the ground.
“Wild,” said the first other-Link.
“Wind,” said the kid-Link.
“Uh. Skyward?” said the Link on the bird (for some reason, the Zelda on a bird giggled).
Wild-Link raised a hand.
Everyone ignored him.
“HEY!” he shouted instead. “How’s a dragon your girlfriend?” He glowered at Tears.
“SheZel. Da. DUH.”
“Pfff, no she’s not,” said Wild. “Zelda’s my girlfriend, not yours. DUH.”
“Pffff she just inn dragnnn form. Dude. Dragon girlfrreiend.”
The Tears-Link pulled something from a pouch on his hip. Was that apple juice?? Whatever it was, he drank it sloppily, having a hard time even finding his mouth. But after a few swallows, he suddenly sat up straight and hopped up, seemingly cured of his concussion. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called to the sky at the top of his lungs, “ZELDAAAAAA! CAN YOU COME DOWN, PLEASE? THIS IDIOT WANTS TO SEE YOU IN HUMAN FORM!”
“I’m not an idiot!”
“Pff, you sure are, I was you, I know how dumb you are.”
“…So wait is she both our girlfriends…? … IS SHE CHEATING ON ME?”
“Dude, I AM you!”
“No you’re not, I’m here, you’re there!”
“Noooo, you’re then. I’m now.”
“Huh?!”
Link stared helplessly at all the other Links (and the Zeldas and birds). “What the hell happened?”
“You happened,” a familiar voice said from a hole in the side of the tree, and Link almost peed his pants. He turned to see his Zelda—his very pretty but frankly terrifying Zelda—staring at him with her eyes flashing lightning and her arms crossed tight across her chest. “How many times do I have to tell you not to play that ocarina lightly?”
“But it was a hot beat!”
Groans issued from inside and outside the tree.
“Guys,” Wild said. “We’ve been Link-rolled.”