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The problem starts because the Links are bored. Historically, this has never led anywhere good.
The main field of Lon Lon Ranch is quiet for once. No monsters, no timeline disasters, no accidental tree marriages.
Just nine heroes left unsupervised for the hour, and the two brain cells currently missing.
Which proves catastrophic.
It starts with, as it always does, Wind.
Wind finds the sling first. He finds it the same way he finds everything fun, by looting the Group’s bags like the pirate he is. There was nothing fun in Four’s or Sky’s, just books and letters. Legend’s was probably warded and Wind didn’t want to be cursed. But Tag’s bag was just left there, open and ready to be searched.
“Guys,” he says with dangerous excitement, rushing out the house and down the porch, waving what looks like a flag over his head. “Look what I found!”
Twilight looks over from where he’s was dropping seeds for the wild birds. The object is, thankfully, familiar. “That a slingshot?”
“Aye! And it’s a big one at that!” He spreads it between his hands, pulling it apart to show it off. “What I’m thinking… We can launch fruit with it.”
And there it is.
The death of peace.
The sling is surprisingly well-made. Strong fabric, good give.
Stretchy.
Wide enough to cradle something significantly larger than one of their normal projectiles for it. Usually, for the heroes, it was seeds or rocks, but they decided on something bigger to use. As some run off to find ammo, Sky tests the tension carefully. He grabs the two loopy parts and pulls as hard as he can; while the fabric stretched, there is no popping seams or ripping noises. “This could actually work.”
Legend immediately points at him, “The fact you said that academically is concerning.” They find two stakes and tamp them into the ground, putting the loops through and testing the stretch. It was declared good enough.
Within five minutes, they are conducting the kind of science that would make Flora proud of Wild. The field has a pile of fruit ammunition, several long ropes for measuring distances, and Wind holding one end at yelling distance to find out how far it goes.
Hyrule attempts to launch an apple first. The sling they made is nothing like the ones he used before, but he gets the general idea of pinch, pull, release.
FWIP. SPLAT.
It flies clean across the courtyard, arc rather low until it hits the ground and explodes.
Wind yells, despite being very close by. “SEVENTEEN FEET.”
A flush crosses Hyrule’s cheeks as someone behind him snickers. “I want a redo! The material of the sling is too soft! I can’t grip it.”
Sky immediately steps up, laying his hand on his brother’s and showing off an orange. “Move. I’ll show you.”
FWIP. SPLAT.
Wind screams like they’re in a tournament. “TWENTY-TWO FEET.”
Sky thought it was… much farther.
Tag, meanwhile, is surprisingly docile during the whole event. Only because she is completely unaware of it happening on the farm. Instead, she agreed to be with Malon and head to the market early and stock up on potions and elixir parts before the next Portal pulled the Group away.
Currently, she was bargaining the price of arrows while Malon tried keeping her from getting arrested. It was working.
Twilight smiles, teeth sharp and wild at what he sees. He grabs a hydromelon from the pile, testing the size in his hands first. To say the least, it fits.
Everyone goes silent as he steps into place, placing the fruit in the little bowl and starts pulling it back slow. Twilight settles into a stance like he’s preparing for battle, feet apart and hips down. “You know, I could throw this further than the sling could. No need for it.”
“Just because you have animalistic, farmer strength, doesn’t mean we all do.” Legend snarked, waiting for his turn with the sling, the voltfruit already bruising in his hand. The sunlight glinted off his power breacles.
FWIP. SPLAT.
“THIRTY NINE AND A HALF FEET.”
“ORDONA’S GRACE!” Twilight half stomps away in rage.
They only agree to move the sling after realizing they wouldn’t be able to break fifty with it so low. Instead, Hyrule and Sky each grip a side and hold it up. It helps enough that they hit fifty-one instantly.
Wind is counting down dramatically. Wild is already climbing onto a wall for a better viewing angle, using the camera to see just how far the fruit could fly. Four is debating the internal structures of the splattered fruit in the grass.
Time walks into the courtyard at the exact wrong moment. And stops. He regrets stopping immediately. “What?” he asks.
No one answers immediately. Because Twilight launches the fourth hydromelon. The sling stretches violently, held up by the sheer willpower of the bored men. Released, the hydromelon rockets into the air like punishment.
Everyone watches it soar. Higher. Longer. Further.
Then—
SPLAT-BOOM.
It explodes against a distant fence in a spray of pink fruit carnage. The men are quiet as Wind follows the rope down and checks the distance. No one speaks, no one breaths.
Then Wind loses his mind. “FIFTY FEET AND A QUARTER INCH!”
There is screaming, joyous in the way that feels like a divine miracle has happened. Legend and Warriors are hugging, Sky lifts all of Four in his arms, and Twilight looks spiritually fulfilled.
He walks back from the barn at the right and worst time. Time stares at the remains of the hydromelon.
Then at the sling.
Then at all of them.
“You built a siege weapon in the front pasture of my wife’s farm?”
Wild points immediately. “Least our’s is educational. The other day, Tag attempted to teach the cuccos to read war maps. They almost attacked Wolfie.”
At that exact moment—
Tag enters the field, already waving them down. “Miss Malon says lunch will be ready, so you all need to…” She steps on a tomato left behind, looking up at the celebration with a frown.
“Perfect! Lunch will give us enough time to run the numbers for the next test launch.” Hyrule waves a hand, calling Tag over. She’s backseat in her mind as she looks it.
Her mind must be wrong. But then again… Tag isn’t sure how much rightness is in this world. She looks up at Time, who just nods at her, his face tight around the edges.
“So, uh.” She clears her throat, turning back to the little hero at her side. Her mouth twitches in the way that gives off the impression that she’s holding a smile back. “Where did you get that?”
“From your bag! You left it open, and that makes it fair game!” Wind is already running back down the rope, mentally picking out what fruit gets launched next. “Unfair you kept something so fun a secret, Tag.”
“No,” Twilight put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “More like it’s shameful she kept it to herself. We could use this in battle. Wild’s bombs could go much farther with the sling.”
“Sling, yes.” Tag smiles, “That is very much so a sling!” She steps behind Wind, looking at it carefully. “What else are we launching?”
“Twi got hydromelons upt past fifty feet, and Warrs got a durian about the same. We think that a pumpkin could go even further if we use power bracelets and power gloves together with one o’ Wild’s tough elixers.”
Malon is already yelling off the porch, walking down to where she was unintentionally ignored. “Tag, dear, is there a reason why lunch is being ignored? I know that we were—”
She looks at the wreckage of the field, the colors staining her green grass. She sees the impromptu sling stretched by two men and a pile of hydromelons on the ground nearby. Her own husband won’t even look her in the eyes.
As the men begin to turn and leave, leaving everything behind, Malon raises a single finger to stop them.
“Does someone want to explain to me why a bra is being crucified in my field?”
Silence has never been so loud. One could have heard Gerudo Desert from the stillness left behind. The field freezes just enough Malon worried she’s killed the Hero’s Spirit with a comment on lingerie.
Four drops their hydromelon completely, not carrying it splits open on their foot. “Hylia’s Grace, we are so stupid.” Hyrule lets go of the strap like it burned him, and Sky gets hit with it as if it is it’s own projectile.
Wind looks at the fabric in horror, slowly bringing his face up to look at Tag. His face is pale, guantly even. “It’s a what?”
Tag points at it, “That’s my bra, swabbie. My ye old boobie fabric.”
Wind goes still, like prey sensing their death is coming sooner and they left their kids to fend for themselves, knowing they won’t survive winter without them.
Time finally sighs and turns to look at his wife. “Well, it was fun before they realized the error of their ways. Warriors got a durian almost sixty feet.”
“Oh, that is impressive.”
Wind screams. Tag was sure it could have been heard from the other timelines.
Sky turns red so fast it’s medically alarming. He looks like a Victorian woman forced to witness frat boys invent railguns and gets constant psychic damage from being in the general vicinity of the bra. Legend physically drops to the ground laughing, head tucked to his chest to hide the tears. Wild starts wheezing so hard he can’t breathe.
And Twilight—Twilight looks genuinely devastated. “We made artillery out of your lady clothes?”
“YES.”
Time covers his face with one hand. “How did none of you realize? It has shoulder straps and suspicious padding.” Dropping it, he looks over the few who look sheepish enough to be guilty.
Wild points weakly. “I’ve never seen one of them!”
Tag looks offended. “THAT’S your defense? That you don’t know what a bra looks like?” She gestures to where it lays in the grass, “It look like inverted boobs!”
“It was structurally sound enough for a sling!”
Twilight immediately looks at his hands. Scared, disgraced, possibly cursed by corrupted Twili magic. “I touched it.”
Tag deadpans, “You all touched it.”
Sky looks moments from ascending into the heavens permanently.
Legend finally finds his voice, “You launched HYRDOMELONS with her BRA!?”
“It was a GROUP EFFORT,” Wind wheezes, nothing strong like his name gives away. He looks almost shy, wilting under everyone turning against him even thought this whole scenario was his fault.
Tag points at him immediately. “Do not collectivize this, Ledge. Wind might have pilfered my undies, but you idiots shot fruit with them. Tell me there were at least clean projectiles involved.” Everyone looks at the exploded hydromelon remains.
“The rinds were clean?”
Time sighs so deeply the Shade can feel it.
Tag walks over calmly, grabbing the stretched-out bra like someone used to grabbing things left on the ground. Examines it once, pulling on the straps and pressing the cups to her chest. Sky gasps scandalously at the action. Not only is it stretched out, there's no way it will fit her now.
Tag looks up at all of them. “You deformed it.” She holds up the poor, ruined bra dramatically. “I can’t get this kind of support in Hyrule, this was Earth-World material support. Comfortable compression that doesn’t look or feel like I’m being murdered by my tits. They belong on my chest, not my neck.” The broken cups look as if it could fill Malon’s chest rather than hers. “You idiots owe me emotional compensation.”
Wild laughs helplessly. “We accidentally reverse-engineered lingerie warfare.”
Sky is still bright red, “I will never emotionally recover from this.”
Tag turns to look at Malon, no shame in her face whatever so. “They built a ballistic missile out of my bra, Mama Lon.” She’s smiling, trying really hard not to. Tag wants to be disappointed, wants to be angry even. But it’s a hilarious disaster to her.
Four wheezes from the ground, and no one is sure which Color is fronting at the moment. “Please don’t call it that while holding it.”
“You used it as a medieval siege engine!”
“It worked!”
“BADLY.”
Time is still trying to recover control of the situation. “This conversation is over.”
“No,” Tag snaps immediately, turning at him. “You stood by while they did this. You watched.”
“I was… curious.” Time looks like he’s wilting in the sun, burning more than blushing. “It also… doesn’t look like anything my wife owns.” Malon, who was finally composing herself slowly, takes one look at her husband and starts snorting again, beating her hand agasint his chest weakly.
Everyone pauses, contemplating those words carefully. No one wanted to know they touched Tag’s bra or what Malon’s looked like. “Mama Lon, you need some better duds. I didn’t need to know that, but I will fix this. I’m a Victoria’s Secret member and I will get you something better than nice.”
Tag turns away from the men and points at the sling configuration they made. “You’re all using it wrong anyways. You are thinking of a sling shot, this is better like an Egyptian-style sling.”
Wind blinks. “An e-what what?”
“That’s not how throwing slings work.” Legend squints suspiciously. “And you want us to believe you know how to use one?”
Tag looks offended. “I had a very normal childhood of throwing rocks at things.” And before anyone can stop her, Tag grabs a the Slate from off to the side and pulls an egg out.
Time points. “No. Not an egg, that will leave a smell behind. The animals can eat the fruit remains. At least a toamtoe if you need to show off.”
Tag grins, “You stood by, why they played around with my bra, and watched. You got to give me one pass.”
She ignores words and uses the egg anyways. Instead, she loops a strap around her wrist and carefully sets the egg into a cup.
She spins it on her wrist, the loop soft enough to move. The egg in the bra probably begins to scramble in the shell. The strap in her hand is gripped tight and the fabric whips through the air above mher head with terrifying efficiency.
And suddenly everyone realizes with mounting alarm that she knows EXACTLY what she’s doing. The egg is going to fly.
Wind’s jaw drops. “Why is she good at this.”
Then—
FWIP.
The egg vanishes. Not flies.
Vanishes.
Its a white blur screaming across the courtyard like divine judgment, looks nothing like the white clouds above them. Everyone watches it soar.
Past the fence.
Past the padocks.
Past Twilight’s previous “record.”
Then—
SPLAT.
A distant explosion of egg against stone.
Tag looks back at them with two fingers raised, one the heroes only knew as a ‘peace sign’. She smiled, smug and wide. “Go on now, Wind. Go the disatance.”
Silence, but ne nods anyways. Wind slowly walks down the line of rope, counting the markers carefully. When he turns back around from the egg’s resting spot, he looks as if Ganondorf himself found a lost puppy and returned it to the owner without looking for a reward. Like kindness.
His voice is quiet as he speaks. “Sixty-seven feet.”
Wild stares at Tag like she’s become a cryptid. She looks like one, with loose purple hair and a bra looped around her wrist.
Twilight looks deeply impressed, even as he still rupped ta his ‘bra grabbing hand’. Legend is crying laughing again, but it’s more crying than laughky wants to curl next to Malon and drown in her tears.
And Time—
Time looks like he’s trying to calculate how many laws were broken simultaneously.
Tag lowers the bra-sling triumphantly. “That,” she says smugly, “is how you use a throwing sling.”
Wind whispers, hoping whatever God or Goddess that was listening would answer. “…with your bra. How to use a bra as a throwing sling.”
“Yep.”
“You weaponized your own underwear to prove us wrong.”
“Yes.”
“You beat all of us.”
“Yes. You all know I’m good at winning.”
Twilight suddenly crosses his arms. “She didn’t even need a Hawkeye’s Mask to hit bullseye. I respect that.”
Sky turns toward him in horror. “YOU SHOULD NOT.”
“It was structurally impressive.”
“It was done with her intimates!”
“You touched it first! It was ballistically accurate.”
Malon is laughing too hard to stand, leaning into Time’s side dangerously close to falling. “Tag, dear, you launched an EGG almost seventy feet with LINGERIE, and not the boys are reevaluating the respect they have for you.”
Tag corrects her instantly. “According to Wind, it’s technically engineering now.”
Time finally steps forward, leaving his wife to laugh into Warriors’ side instead. The Captain still looks like he’s been attacked by a bokoblin wearing a tutu, but held his hands respectfully on Malon’s shoulders.
Time moves slowly, carefully. Like approaching a bomb. “Tag.”
“Yeah?”
“Give me the bra.”
“What? No, it’s mine.”
“You are not allowed to possess ranged undergarments. You already got caught sewing a pocket into your tunic to conceal a small knife, learned how to converse with lynels, and nearly attempted a coup in another era of Hyrule.”
“That feels discriminatory. Why can’t you go back to yelling at Wind for stealing my clothes?”
“Because you are the one who turned it into military equipment.”
“Wind started it. It originally supported my heavy ordinance because ya’ll couldn’t stand the sight of my nipples.” Wind collapses next to her when Time looks at him. “It’s only a weapon now because you see how good I am with things.”
Then Twilight, traitor that he is, asks. “Do you think it could throw a pumpkin?”
The entire courtyard freezes. Tag slowly turns toward him and narrows her eyes thoughtfully. “Maybe… Probably.”
Wild gasps, already gunning for the Slate. “I have pumpkins!” Wind starts chanting the name.
“ABSOLUTELY NOT.” Time immediately points at everyone. “There is already enough of a mess to clean up, we are not adding pumpkins to the mix of it.”
However, the argument escalated since it had already launched an egg seventy feet, they’ve all touched the bra, and Tag was willing to let them try.
But they do break for lunch at Malon’s demand. They take it outside and sit in the field with the corpses of splattered fruits.
It should have been the end of it all. It doesn’t. Because Wind doesn’t shut his mouth about open bags and intimate items being ‘in the open’. Of fruit thrown eighty feet when his didn’t even go twelve.
Tag points at him. “It’s because you throw like a wet squirrel.”
“I’m little still. Wait for my growth spurt, and I’ll be the one throwing you.”
“That sounds like a personal issue.”
Twilight, traitor to society, crosses his arms. “I still think I could beat the record with proper weight distribution.”
Sky looks exhausted. “Please stop analyzing the underwear physics and let me enjoy food in non-secular conversations.”
Wild is already setting up another round of fruits—apples, hydromelons, voltfruits, pumpkins. Legend mutters to no one and everyone, “We’re going to die because of bras. Why couldn’t it have been something less diseased? I’d say one of Wind’s socks, but he doesn’t wear those.”
“Why would I wear socks with sandals?!”
Time snaps. Not angrily, just tired. The kind of exhaustion built into competitive nightmares of lingerie-based fruit laughing and several overlapped voiced speaking numbers like it means something.
“Tag, give me an apple.”
Everyone turns to look between the two of them. Tag blink, her bra limp in her hand. “What?”
Time holds out his hand. “The apple. And the bra.”
Tag slowly hands him the apple, then the bra ceremonially. She drops to her knees and raised the nearly broken material with both hands.
Transferring a sacred relic like a princess’s tiara.
Time takes the sling with the calm focus of a warrior entering battle. He steps between the posts and loops one of the straps around his wrist. He drops an apple into one of the cups and starts swinging it over his head.
FWIP.
Immediately, everyone notices something horrifying. He knows how to hold it properly. Know’s how to use it properly.
Tag narrows her eyes. “Well played, Old Man. How did you learn?”
Time doesn’t look up from the horizon. “I grew up with kids.” That explains literally everything. It explains nothing. It makes more questions that it gives answers.
The apple disappears into the horizon like it’s trying to escape mortality itself. It’s red, then blurry. Everyone watches it soar.
Past the egg mark.
Past the several hydromelon marks.
Past dignity.
THUNK.
A distant impact somewhere beyond the fence. Wind slowly measures and isn’t sure if the numbers is right, so he recounds it again.
He looks as if a ghost stole Tetra again and looks up in horror.
“One hundred and eighty-two feet.”
Dead silence.
Tag stares. Twilight stares. Malon smirks because she knows she married the right man.
Time lowers the bra calmly. “There.” Like he didn’t just become the reigning champion of lingerie artillery.
Wind explodes first. “NO WAY. How?!”
Four is half lost trying to design a weapon that could ack like a sling but also a sword, and it’s going mentally well. Sky looks as if he is waiting for Hylia to call him away. Warriors is muttering about a ‘Sprite being dangerous’ to Malon, Tag isn’t able to make out what any of it meant.
Twilight looks deeply offended in a competitive way.
Wild points accusingly. “You were sandbagging us! You watched us fail for your own enjoyment!”
Time hands the bra back to Tag. “I simply understand leverage.”
Tag narrows her eyes thoughtfully. Looking at how the man starts leaning down to apologize to his wife for touching another woman’s bra. She says the worst sentence imaginable. “…I wonder if a bigger cup size would throw farther.”
Time goes rigid. Both eyes widening just a tad bit. He looks at the bra in Tag’s hand, then at his wife’s chest. Malon blushes at her husband’s action. “You are not stealing Malon’s underclothes to answer that question.”
Tag looks offended. “I wasn’t gonna steal it.”
“That is not the important part.”
“I’d ask.”
Silence. Utter silence.
Time looks spiritually exhausted. “You are not conducting launch experiments with my wife's clothes.”
Tag gasps immediately. “Your wife might support my innovation.”
“She absolutely would not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I HAVE KNOWN HER FOR DECADES.”
Malon wipes tears from her eyes and looks at the young woman infront. “Ask me anyway, dear. I need to see the conversation done with.”
Tag immediately puts on a sweet voice. “Mama Lon, may I borrow your bra to determine optimal produce-launching aerodynamics? I want to do fruit ballistic testing.”
Time points at her like an accusing prophet, cheeks blazing. “Do not answer her, Malon. Nos are yesses, and yesses are ‘go ahead’.”
The rest of the day is peaceful, normal even. Domestic in the way that invites ruin.
It starts innocently enough. Time is out repairing fences with Twilight. Warriors got stuck helping Four and Wild dress the horses and fit them for shoes. Wind is hiding somewhere, so no one asks him to do anything.
Tag makes eye contact with Malon across the barn. They both grin.
“You were serious on asking me?” Malon asks.
Tag looks deeply offended. “About science? Not really. For messing with Time? Oh, always..”
Malon laughs into her hand. “I thought Time was exaggerating when he described you in his letters.”
“He’d call it ‘unauthorized undergarment warfare.’”
“That sounds like him.”
Five minutes later they are behind the barn. There is a trade of a bra and a pumpkin. Tag thinks this is how civilizations collapse.
Malon holds up the experimental sling critically. Her bra, alone, could possibly hold up a grown man from falling to his death off a cliff. “I hate to say it, you know, but this does make sense structurally.”
Tag points immediately. “Thank you. It’s the extra material, I think.”
“The support distribution is stronger than cloth strips. And the cup shape stabilizes heavier projectiles.”
Tag clutches her chest emotionally. Her hands are nearly flat on her chest. “You understand me.”
Malon laughs so hard she nearly drops the pumpkin. She lets Tag set the sticks farther apart and watches as she starts launching tiny rocks from the cups. “Oh, this is absolutely something I’ll be telling the Queen during our next tea meeting.” Tag snorts. “Gives me something more to talk about other than Epona and her kins.”
The first launch nearly kills them both laughing. Not because it fails. Because it works TOO WELL. The pumpkin rockets out of the sling like a divine missile and clears half the pasture before exploding spectacularly against a fence post. The distant sound of wood breaking, singing with the sound of splattering pumpkins.
Both women stare at the death ahead of them. Then slowly to the other. Malon doubles over laughing first.
“OH MY GOD?!” Tag isn’t sure if she wants to scream or jump, so she does both. “Easily a hundred feet!”
Malon wheezes, “The fence is,” She gasps, “It’s gone! We’ll have to be the ones to fix it. Tag nods but points to where there were more that one pumpkin she stashed away.
“Want to do it again?”
Hours pass, and it’s became a project. It could be dinner time, it could be after. It could have been the next day.
They optimize, adjust angles, line up the pumpkins is size and weight order. At one point Malon sketches diagrams in the dirt while Tag measures launch distances with the rope.
Neither of them notices how insane this has become. Tag chooses one of the bigger pumpkins anyway, already playing it. It’s more than a unit, heavier than even the hydromelons. Malon squints at it. “This might be a tad much for a bra, Sugar. Might kill someone.”
Tag nods solemnly, tapping the fortified pumpkin with her knuckles. “Probably.”
“Should we stop?”
“Oh, absolutely not.” Together, they load it into the sling. The bra stretches ominously. Tag steps back slowly. “If this snaps, we die.”
Malon grins. “Worth it.”
They launch. And for one glorious moment, physics gives up.
The pumpkin FLIES better than a pig could.
It’s over the pasture.
Over the fences.
Over one terrified horse eating an apple it stole.
And finally crashes nearly two hundred feet away in an explosion of orange gore.
Tag comes running back after measuring, hollering. “ONE HUNDRED NINETY-THREE FEET.”
Malon is crying laughing. “We’re geniuses.”
“We’re war criminals.”
“We’re BOTH.”
Tag is so excited she starts pacing. “No! No, no. Listen—” She grabs Malon’s shoulders dramatically. “If we could get Time to do it with one of yours—”
Malon immediately starts laughing harder. “Absolutely not.”
“He could clear FOUR HUNDRED.”
“TAG.”
“He’s got that proud farm strength of a man who can make bras by sheer willpower!”
“He is NOT turning any of my bras for pumpkin artillery.”
“He already used mine.”
“That sentence should never exist.”
The tragedy occurs ten minutes later. Because of course it does—nothing in Tag’s life has been right the first time, or even the twenty-thirty-fourty something. It’s the exact moment the boys return; in earshot, they can hear everything. Silence falls across the pasture as Time clears his throat.
Tag freezes. Malon freezes. The cucuoo off to the side freezes.
Time slowly looks from the newly destroyed fence to the exploded pumpkin remains. “Tag.” He sighs like Majora is texting him nudes and he wants to destroy the phone. “Are you corrupting my wife?”
“No,” She says with all the subtlety of a child getting caught with chocolate on her face. “Malon started it!”
“What? No, you don’t!” Malon shoved Tag’s shoulder, “You were the one who stole the pumpkins!”
“You were the one who readjusted the straps and made knots in the wood for them!”
Wind spots the crater first and broken fence second. “ARE YOU LAUNCHING PUMPKINS WITHOUT US?!” He sounds mortally wounded. Some of the Group starts laughing at their sputtered embarrassment.
Twilight looks devastated and impressed simultaneously. The women beat his wrecked past submission; it was dead and buried in pumpkin guts.
Time walks forward slowly. The terrifyingly calm kind of slowly. “Malon.”
His wife smiles sweetly, batting her eyelashes. “Yes, Dear?”
“Why is there a crater in the ranch?”
Malon gestures vaguely. “We’re conducting fruit science?”
“That is not an explanation.”
“It is enough of one.”
Tag points excitedly at the distance marker. “Mama Lon’s bra made it to one ninety-three!”
Wind gasps like witnessing a miracle. “No way! You be lying! Never once been truth from your mouth!” He runs down the rope and comes back just as fast. “Gales! They’re not lying, Old Man!”
Time closes his eye, already feeling this will end in a disaster. “You two launched a pumpkin nearly two hundred feet.”
Tag points accusingly. “Yes we did! And we did it without any of you.”
“That is somehow not comforting.”
Then Malon, traitorous and beautiful Malon, says the worst possible thing. “She thinks you could hit four hundred if you were prepared enough.”
Everyone turns toward Time like rabid raccoons sniffing an all-you-can-eat donut chain closed down for cleaning and no security.
Time immediately steps backwards. “No. Not even once, not to test it, not to anyone’s enjoyment.”
Twilight crosses his arms thoughtfully. “Actually, with enough force, you might be—”
Time points at him next, murder in his one eye. “Don’t. Start.” But that word has never once worked on the Group, his wife, or Tag. She already has the biggest pumpkin in her arms, staring him down.
“Come on.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No, Tag.”
“But you’re one of the Chosen Heroes of the Gods.”
“That does not apply to lingerie-styled pumpkin launching.”
“It should!” Malon laughs so hard she has to sit down in the grass. Tag continues. “Come on! You literally can throw a Goron over your shoulder! Just sling shot the pumpkin and break four hundred feet.”
“No.”
“Please? I already said please once!”
“No.”
“You literally wrestle Wolfie for fun.”
“That is different.”
“How?”
“He deserves play time.”
Meanwhile, the others have completely abandoned reason. Wind is acting as an announcer, giving eulogies to the smashed fruits and the single egg in the field. Four might be making graves. Wild is placing distance markers, or headstones, Time isn’t sure.
And Malon—
Malon is the greatest threat of all because she keeps encouraging Tag. “You almost had the angle right, Sugar. I think a tad higher or a lil’ to the right so it catches on the air some.”
Time feels betrayed by his own wife.
She gives up asking and decides to do it herself. Tag eventually stands back, the pasture feeling more like a warzone than any dungeon the Group had been too. She’s preparing for destiny and greatness.
Hair tied back.
Sleeves rolled up.
One final pumpkin loaded into the ‘sling’. The bra itself looks exhausted. Stretched beyond mortal limits, with edges held together by the remnants of sweat and fruit juice.
One strap is hanging on through sheer determination.
Sky, arriving late to the scene, takes one look and starts whispering prayers.
Legend beside him sighs, “You missed the last three acts of the tragedy. Could have used some divine grace then, Sky-Man.”
Tag points dramatically toward the open field, ignoring the men behind her. Malon steps forward to dab at her temple and walks back to her husband. “This is it! The four-hundred-foot attempt!”
“It is not,” Time says instantly, “And you’ve said that the last twelve times.”
Tag plants her feet, pulling back slow at first, saving her strength until she has to engage her core and prey her one-pack turns until a number better than that.
The pumpkin is hanging on like a failed prom in 2020. (fuck you covid i should have danced).
The fabric strains, creaks. Hems pop open. Tag couldn’t hear it over her labored grunting as she digs into the dirt and steps backwards again. It feel like she’s thrusting into the pumpkin each time she brings her hands back to her body, pulling even more.
Time’s eyes narrow instantly, ears twitching at the noise. “…Tag?” She ignores him.
Twilight notices next. “Hey, uh, Tag? I think it’s time to stop.” The strap stretches another inch. It looks as if whatever is holding it together needed more prayer and glue.
Wild slowly backs away; he died once, he didn’t plan on it a second time.
Sky squeaks, stuttering over words. “I think it’s going to—”
SNAP.
Time slows. Not the hero, the concept and object itself. The sling explodes catastrophically. One cup flies into a tree. A strap whips through the air like divine punishment. The sudden relaxation it gets is a spa treatment in death.
And the pumpkin—still carrying all the potential force of Hylia herself—launches directly backward. Straight into Tag’s stomach.
THOOMF.
Tag folds in half instantly. Then falls over backwards into the grass, wheezing like her soul left her body for the third time. She curls into a ball small enough that a Goron could play Boom Bam Golf with her corpse. “Guys.” The voice cracks like a prepubescent boy singing a solo in a choir in front of his parents. “Guys, I fucked up.”
The Group and Malon can only stare as Tag carefully wiggles in the dirt.
Wild drops to his knees laughing, beating the ground with a closed fist. His snorts remind Tag of the hogs on his home island.
Twilight physically turns away because he’s trying not to scream, but he does so anyway. Because this is the woman who demanded traveler’s compensation when they camped. It’s worth the laugh.
Legend is making horrible choking noises, half-holding up the remains of the totally, completely, absolutely destroyed undergarments. “It’s—I don’t think I’ll be able to fix this one, Tag Along.”
Even Sky covers his mouth, desperately trying to stay respectful. It doesn’t work.
And Malon—traitor, criminal, wife of Time—falls completely onto her side, laughing so hard she can’t breathe.
In their joy, Tag feels the way her organs start to reshift back into place. She curls around the safe thing she could find, the fucking pumpkin, and makes a noise meant for a dying animal.
“HHHHRRRGH.”
Time walks over immediately. Concerned. Responsible. The only adult here who isn’t dying on the spot. He kneels beside her. “Tag? Can you hear me? Can you see me?”
She looks up at him with tears streaming down her face. And manages the worst thing she could say. “I think it perforated my liver.” That destroys him instantly. Time SNORTS. Actually snorts. Then immediately looks horrified at himself, before falling into laugher hard enough to drop the moon. Tag points at him weakly from the ground. “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO HELP ME.”
“I AM TRYING.”
“YOU ARE LAUGHING.”
“I’M CONTEMPLATING HOW TO HELP WITH INTERNAL INJURIES.”
Wind is fully rolling in the grass now. “She got assassinated by a pumpkin.”
Wild can barely breathe, “By a bra.”
Tag curls tighter around herself. “This is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I’ve cramped out blood clots that feel like baby kitten kisses. Kidney stones that could have been on par with winning the lottery. I’ve stepped on a knife and it didn’t feel like this.”
Twilight wheezes, “That was sharp. This is blunt force trauma, Tag.”
“THIS IS DIFFERENT PAIN.”
Malon crawls over, still laughing helplessly. There are more tears on her face than Tags. “Oh, sweetheart… That pumpkin made you fly.”
Tag looks betrayed beyond words. “You ENCOURAGED me.”
“I didn’t think the bra would explode.”
“IT DIED A HERO.”
Sky finally manages to kneel beside her, too. Though he’s shaking and finding it hard to do much more than press a hand to her and feel her heartbeat. His hand doesn’t stop despite his giggles. “Can you breathe?”
Tag wheezes dramatically, testing the limits of her ribcage. “I think so. Unfortunately,” Legend immediately loses it again. “I can feel my heartbeat in new locations on the inside.”
Time tries desperately to regain composure. “Okay. Okay.” Deep breaths. “Can you stand?”
Tag reaches for him weakly like a dying Victorian widow. “I’ve been murdered.”
“You were not murdered.”
“My organs have been powdered.”
“You were hit by a pumpkin, Tag, not Wind’s Skull Hammer.”
“It was a really fast pumpkin.”
Wild is crying now. Literal tears. “She got reverse-catapulted.”
Twilight adds through his barking laughter, “No, it’s the recoil damage.”
Tag buries her face in Malon’s side, since she’s the only one not openly laughing anymore. “You all suck. You all suck so much, and I hope the next time you pray to Hylia, you get sent to collect calls and voicemail.”
Malon pats her hair sympathetically. “Cheer up, Sugar. You almost got four hundred.”
Tag sniffles. “Really?”
“Oh, absolutely. At least I think so. No one has checked the number yet, but I am hopeful for you.”
Tag immediately, and weakly, lifts a fist to her. “Write that on my grave, Mama Lon.”
Time finally stilled enough he can lifts her carefully in his arms, keeping her from curling in too much. Tag still clutched her stomach and glares at everyone as he walked past them like she’s deeply offended by the concept of consequences.
And as he starts walking her back toward the ranch house, Wind is only just heard. He turns to see half a bra in the hero’s hand. “Nay really could support ‘heavy ordinance’ after all… You think TWO bras could—”
“Someone smack him for me!”