Chapter Text
As far as Link could tell, there were three ways he could break into the Pyramid of Power.
First, the loading docks. Carriages came in through the back entrance regularly, with workers unloading boxes upon boxes of Piscine Performance LLC crystals, vitality potions, and whatever new junk they were promoting, covered in flashy designs and Ganondorf's emblem, a painted boar's mask. Other, unmarked carriages carried in supplies, Link assumed. He could slip into one of the incoming boxes, but that was too easy.
Second, the pipes. This was more of a theoretical option: the large drain that dumped goo into the nearby river had a vent that he could pull off and squirm through to get…somewhere inside? Not the best— he didn't want to get poisoned. River Zora constitutions like his couldn't handle water like that. Plus, he wanted to go somewhere specific.
Lastly, the front entrance. Foolhardy, sure, stupid, maybe, but fun, definitely. A sliver of a grin curled up Link's face, and he unstuck himself from the lamppost he had been leaning against.
Okay getting through the front door wasn't that hard. The brazenness was the point. He took out his Picto Pad and snapped a photo of the main lobby for even more brazen points. It was oddly reminiscent of a stone dungeon, complete with fake torches and a iron chandelier lighting up the brutalist, black marble welcoming desk and shimmering steel door.
"Excuse me!" the Hylian girl featured in the middle of his photo shouted, resting snugly between two bodyguards three times his height and four times broader. "I am not accepting photographs at the moment!"
She whipped around to face him, her perfectly straight blonde hair snapping back into place as her perfectly pale forehead wrinkled photogenically at him. He swore he had seen that face plastered on an advertisement somewhere…
"Stop gawping at me with your big, googly eyes. I'm dealing with someone else right now," Zelda Hyrule, owner of blessed™ and creator of the Gorgeous Goddess line of beauty products, said.
"Uh." Link squinted at her. His eyes were not that big.
"Anyway, what is a little kid like you doing here? This is important. Shoo."
Link raised his Picto Pad up and snapped a photo of her face.
"What did I just tell you?" Zelda said, a bright smile on her smooth cheeks. "Delete those right now, or I'll use force."
Link shook his head.
"If you insist!" Zelda pulled back and gestured for her bodyguards.
One reached out to him with a meaty hand, grabbing his wrist and yanking him up into the air. The Picto Pad dangled in his outstretched arm for a few moments before he pulled it close to his chest. Zelda glared at him from far below.
Two Moblins walked in through the door, swinging it open. Shiny security badges glinted on their chests.
Link didn't wait. He spat a fireball out at the bodyguard's chest, and dropped to the floor. Scrabbling towards the open door, he ducked under a Moblin's legs, then slid on the tile into a dark hallway. The door shut with an anticlimactic click behind him. Now he was properly in the building, he could start the fun part. Rumors placed Ganondorf's office on the very top of the Pyramid. All he had to do was get there and prove he did it.
Eyes on the prize, Link dashed towards a moving platform-elevator down the hall. He smacked the crystal switch on the side of the elevator, and it glowed blue for a brief second, before fading back to yellow.
"Foolish employee!" Ganondorf's voice boomed from a speaker tile. "Have you forgotten that the elevator requires a keycard? Get it promptly, or take the stairs, at your peril!"
But where were they? Link glimpsed the Moblin guards rounding the corner, and ran out of the elevator and down another hall to his right, watching for any indication of stairs. The Moblins' footsteps grew louder as he dashed past unmarked doors. He glanced behind. They weren't in sight yet, but they would be soon. Better to hide now. Grabbing a door handle, he slipped inside, careful to close the door gently.
He backed into the room, and turned around to see a tall Sheikah woman with a notepad in her hand, silvery-white hair in a tight bun. Behind her stood a long table, plush red chairs with wooden trimming arranged around it, and a chalkboard that read "Unionize = Get Vaporized."
"You don't look like you belong in here," she said, though she had no badge or any form of identification.
Link took a step towards the door, baring his fangs.
Her eyebrow went up. "I don't care that you're here. I'm just curious about how you got in."
He shrugged. "Front door."
"That sounds foolish."
"How about you?" Link asked.
"Loading dock. I have friends." Both eyebrows went up this time.
"I think I heard something!" a guard's muffled voice came through the door. Link scanned the room for any exits, and his eyes landed on a door beyond the table.
The woman shook her head, and lifted one of the chairs off the ground. Wheels on the bottom of its lion-footed legs swivelled around from the motion. Link, in turn, let a fireball sit in the back of his throat.
The door opened, and three guards burst in. The woman's chair slammed into two of them, sending both sprawling on the ground. The other guard yelped as he ran away, frantically putting out the fire on his fur. Impa stepped over the prone guards, and gestured for Link to follow her.
"Name's Impa," she puffed as they dashed down the hall. "Are you here to investigate?"
Link shook his head.
"Personal vendetta?"
Link shrugged. "I like breaking into buildings."
"It's a useful skill," Impa admitted.
Three more guards rounded a corner, headed straight towards them. Impa stopped, grumbling something under her breath. Then she lunged towards one of the guards, sending them spinning with a roundhouse kick.
As Impa threw a punch at the next guard, another reached around and pulled her into his own body. His arm locked her neck in place. Impa jabbed her elbow into his stomach, but the guard didn't budge.
Link opened his mouth, fireball at the ready.
"Now, wait a sec, little guy," the guard said. "You don't want to hurt her, do ya?"
Impa rolled her eyes, and twisted her head around in the guard's grasp. She grabbed the guard's badge with her teeth, and spit it out. "Go on!"
Link caught the badge, gave Impa a thumbs-up, and ran towards the elevator. He hit the crystal switch as hard as he could, and this time it stayed blue.
"Make your floor selection carefully, worm," the speaker tile said, unfolding to reveal several smaller crystal switches, labeled from zero to fifty. Link hit the highest one without a thought.
"Very well. To the top floor." Ganondorf's laugh sounded chilling even recorded. The platform lurched up, speeding so quickly to the top that Link hit the ground. Floors whizzed past faster than Link could comprehend, until, finally, the elevator slowed, and came to a stop with a ding!
"Let us both hope you don't cross me," Ganondorf's voice said before fading.
Link rolled his eyes as he shook himself off and walked out. He didn't count on it.
The top floor was oddly quiet compared to the hullaballoo of previous floors. The hallways were well-lit, and covered in a tasteful, but colorful wallpaper, with plush flooring. Various gold-framed pictures of Ganondorf— still in a mask— with two wrinkled old women beside him hung on the walls.
Down the hall, he spotted some Hylian bumbling around like they didn't know where they were. Another intruder? What was this, Do a Crime Day? He waved at them.
"Ohh!!! Hello!!!" the Hylian waved back. "Can I interest you in some potions?"
Link stared at them.
"Piscine Performance really has some great ones!" they said, digging through the massive pack on their back and pulling out some sort of green ooze in a bottle. "This one's guaranteed to increase your stamina! It's all natural, sourced from fresh green stamina fruit…"
"How'd you get here?" Link asked.
"Oh." The Hylian blinked. "Well, they say that being close to the top is the best way to get there yourself, so I decided the best place to sell my wares would be the very top of Ganondorf's Pyramid! What do you think?"
"No, how'd you get here," Link insisted.
"My bag!" They patted it.
"What's in it?"
"Many useful things! Some for sale, some I might take offers on. But I really need to get rid of these stamina potions. Just thirty rupees for half a bottle! You know you want it!" They shook the bottle gingerly in front of Link's face. "You know you want it!"
Link pushed the bottle away and gave them a look of annoyance. "Do you know where the boss's office is?"
"Yeah! Thataway." They gestured behind them. "Ah, I see! You're trying to get to the top of the ladder too! Does that make you my rival?"
Link nodded his thanks, and trotted off in the direction of the office.
"Wait! I shouldn't have told a rival that, now he's going to get a leg up on me…consider that a freebie from the best salesperson in Hyrule, Beedle!"
Link sighed, and stopped in front of a great wooden door with a simple plaque. The door was locked; looked like a standard one, no frills or electronic doodads. He stuck one of his claws into the keyhole and jostled it around for a few seconds before he was satisfied, and pulled open the door.
Ganondorf's office was tidy, with a large window looking out over Castle City and a huge dark mahogany desk. Another chalkboard with some scheme Link couldn't figure out stood off in one corner, and bookshelves on the sides. Link snapped a picture of the room, then a picture of his face for his personal records. His Picto Pad had a timing feature on it, so he placed it down, leapt up onto Ganondorf's desk, and posed.
As he expected, the desk had plenty of confidential-looking papers on it, including a folder that said "CONFIDENTIAL" in big red letters. Candy, too: colorful, wrinkly, and powdery-sweet, with little chickpeas inside a sugar coating. Link chewed thoughtfully as he flipped the folder open. Impa seemed dead-set on uncovering the secrets of this lousy company. Maybe she'd appreciate some extra information. At the very least, he could lord it over Zelda, who probably hadn't made it past the lobby.
He felt a slight chill as he flipped to the first page. Link helped himself to another handful of candy as he attempted to understand it. His claw traced over each letter, and his eyes widened as he began to decipher each word. He could feel his heart racing.
Why was there a dark shadow looming behind him?
Link woke up to someone shaking him. His eyes opened, and he found himself staring directly into Zelda's face. Her bright blue eyes were strangely watery, and her face looked a little red.
"What did they do to you?" Zelda said as Link scrabbled away from her and hit a concrete wall. "You were completely unconscious!"
Link snorted. "Why do you care?"
Zelda crossed her arms. Her hair looked tousled in the dim lighting of wherever they were. "Well, Hylia forbid I get a little frazzled at someone throwing what looks like the corpse of someone I just saw running around the building. Into a cell! With me!"
"Is that Zelda Hyrule, owner of blessed™ and creator of the Goregeous Goddess makeup line?!?" Beedle's voice echoed.
Zelda smiled (despite looking like she was about to lose her mind), and dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. "Um. Yes?" she replied in a shaky voice. "Can you help us?"
"Oh, no, I'm stuck in a cell with this lady that's glaring daggers at me. Sorry. Do you want a stamina potion? I think you're right across from us, so I could probably toss it to you if you threw sixty rupees my way."
"Are you serious?" Impa snapped.
"Did I not sound serious enough…?"
Link decided to ignore this conversation in favor of walking over to the bars of their cell. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but he could maybe try lockpicking again. Before he could stick his claw into the keyhole, a massive screen lowered itself from the ceiling in front of the cells. Link jerked back, studying it before it flickered on.The light of the screen shone against his and Zelda's faces, and they watched Ganondorf walk to the camera on the other side. A fairy sat on his desk in the background, flipping through a book twice her size as her antennae twitched.
"The gall. Breaking into my office and trying to look at my plans! It's very fortunate that I'm prepared for such things." His voice had an unmistakable sneer to it. "All four of you had the audacity to try and break into my Pyramid, and you will pay dearly for it. I will punish you so heavily for tresspassing on my property that the rest of your lives will be torment. Agony. Your children's children will know of your mistakes!"
"Sir—"
Ganondorf whirled around. "What!"
The fairy placed her book down, and fluttered over to the camera. She had large, translucent wings, and a sour expression underneath the two simple eyes on her forehead. "We should approach this in a professional manner, I think. Let me translate."
"According to Castle City Statutes, trespassing on any locality designated as a business is highly illegal. Regardless of any personal feelings I may have on the matter— ahem. The fine for trespassing on commercial property is a maximum of about 200% of the individual's annual income. The punishment for violent tresspassing is up to the property owner. We, Piscine Performance LLC LLC, have decided to charge you for the maximum fine possible, as well as other fines for violent tresspass."
"That's ridiculous. I'll sue!" Zelda exclaimed.
Ganondorf sniffed. "There are other, more final methods. Our incinerator, hot as the flames of Death Mountain, for example! How would you like that, little princess?"
"We are also considering another method of punishment. We have a state-of-the art garbage disposal unit on site, that reaches a maximum of 1,200 degrees."
"But sir! All I wanted was to sell potions in a convenient and lucrative spot!" Beedle said.
"I will not contend with such nonsense. Prepare yourselves for my flames!"
The screen went black again.