A short distance into the well's dungeon, there had been a decrepit sign left by who knows that had read: 'Dark! Narrow! Scary! Well of Three Features.'
'I don't have time for this, seven years in the past or not, Mom is depending on me!' thought Akane as she had marched straight onwards into the darkness.
Now however, Akane mentally whimpered: 'Couldn't that sign have at least been lying about one of those features?' The heroes had followed Azusa deeper into the maze that apparently lay underneath the deceptively humble looking well. While Azusa could make herself immaterial, apparently she couldn't do the same for the lens and was forced to travel along a path the heroes were barely able to follow.
Akane felt her nerves being ground down like cheese on a grate as she followed the others through the small passage that reminded her of the aqueducts that were once in Hyrule Castle. Link took front, Ukyo following behind, Navi and Tatl providing light on both ends with Akane herself bringing up the rear.
Akane hadn't thought about it until now how her clothes had changed to what she'd have worn seven years prior. 'Am I... am I wearing a copy of what that other me out there is wearing right now, looking for mom and the princess? I really wish I had worn gloves then!' The heroes would have never fit through the passageway as adults, and even as kids, the long chamber was a tight squeeze. Akane felt ages of filth and THINGS impress themselves into the grooves of her fingerprints as she crawled along, the muck of the ceiling and walls smudging into her sides with every inch. Akane's entire body shivered as she felt her bare hand press into something that squished between her fingers, something that she couldn't hope to identify in the darkness. 'Goddess, small miracles.'
"S-so how are you guys holding up?" Akane asked, anything to get her mind off this. "You guys doing alright? I saw castle privies that were neater than this."
"Meh, this is nothing," Link said as he crawled along like a trooper. "You should have seen how Mido, that's this big mouth from Kokiri Forest, pushed me into a Deku Shrub nest this one time!"
Ukyo chirped in: "There was also that time I stumbled into those leftovers from a kill some Wolfos had apparently left behind. I couldn't eat anything for days... Hey, Link!"
"Yeah?"
"I just want ya to know: While I always knew I was a Hylian, I was always so happy that you, Saria and everyone else accepted me as one of you. I'm honored that you guys all consider me a Kokiri."
"Thanks, Ukyo! But I'm not... really a Kokiri either, so it's not like my vote counts on that sort of thing." The reminder of Link finding out just how different he was from all the others he had been raised by was a mark that wouldn't just vanish any time soon.
"Don't you start sounding like Mido! Link, I never believed I was really a Kokiri, but I was still part of the group all the same, that's what counts with me, and that's what should count with you."
"Thank you, Ukyo, really, thanks!"
Navi sniffed. She regretted it, but said all the same: "Oh, that's so sweet! You two are so cute together."
Ukyo and Link face's burned in the darkness.
"Oh, gag me!"
Navi frowned. "Do you always have to ruin the moment, Tatl?"
"I just want us to stay on task, we're on a treasure slash ghost hunt, not a support group soul search!"
"We wouldn't need to if the lens we need was just at the bottom of the well instead of deep inside yet ANOTHER creepy dungeon. Who made all these places? Endangered Monster Protection groups?"
"Mom told me," Akane began, doing her best to ignore the feelings of hard pressure, cold slick slim, and rough stone hammering at her knees all at once. "That this well used to be in the backyard of a man who could see the truth. But his house burned down, and the well was all that was left."
"So he must have had the lens."
"Do you always have to blab the obvious, Navi?" Tatl retorted.
"Well, excuuuse me..."
"So was this guy a Sheikah too?" Ukyo asked, knowing Link was never the type to ask.
"I don't know," Akane confessed, "Mom never went into detail, and almost nobody in town ever mentions it. If not for Mom, I might not have known about it. But the Lens of Truth is supposed to be a Sheikah artifact, so it makes sense."
"I wonder why everyone's so hush hush about something like that?" Navi always could ask the right questions. "And why was it here in the well in the first place?"
And Tatl could always give a sharp and pragmatic answer. "Well, since none of you are really kids, I suppose I can share the obvious conclusion." The kids would have turned their heads to look at her, but there wasn't enough room in the cramped tunnel. "People like to keep secrets, both silly and sinister. People as a general rule are afraid of the truth."
"That's absurd!" Navi retorted.
"Is it? Navi, what if it turned out you were an imp transmuted into a fairy, who then lost her memory? Would you want to find out what you used to be? But if you want something less abstract, how about this one? Would you trust someone who might have see-through vision? What if you hid something precious where no one else knew where it was? And it was stolen? Who'd you think was the most likely thief? Someone you had a wonderful discussion with about your house the other day, or the person who might be able to see through walls and could have seen where you put your precious something?"
"You're saying he was a scapegoat?" Akane whispered.
"Or someone with just too many secrets just wanted to be rather safe than sorry. Not that any of us are ever likely going to know for sure what really happened to him."
Navi decided it was best not to mention the human skeleton she had noticed in the corner of the room they had first come into when they first entered the well.
The giant shadow beast brooded in its personal chamber, banging its giant drum, commanding the various spirits and corpses in the glorified mausoleum and prison to strike down the hateful woman who had made him a prisoner of that cramped, tiny well years before who now trespassed in the house of the dead. The ones who even the spirit world would not accept through it's doors, or so they believed.
Its flesh as black as roasted meat, its severed hands striking the drum again and again to vent its anger, the single Sheikah eye peering out of the stump of its beheaded neck. Memories twisted faded images devoid of sense. Even its name had been one it had taken when its real one was forgotten, for the drum it now beat. The Evil King had offered it freedom and revenge, of course it would serve the wicked ruler, for now. After all, all that remained was the hate, the hate's origin and reason long forgotten, leaving nothing but the hate!
"But then why leave the lens lying about, then?" Ukyo asked, stunned at all of this.
"Well," Tatl thought. "These are all just theories mind you, but he either hid it, or the locals put it behind as many nasties as they dared place it among to keep anyone else from using it. Or your mother put it down here herself for safe keeping. But that does leave the question why she wouldn't have gotten it herself."
"If anything you said was even remotely true," Akane said, "Then WHY wouldn't the villagers just smash the lens?"
"Even I can answer that."
"Huh?" Tatl looked at Navi.
The blue fair simply shrugged and said: "They couldn't destroy it."
"Why not put it on a ship across the ocean?"
"Keep your friend close, and keep your enemies even closer."
Link scratched his head. "What's an ocean?"
"Link!"
"What?"
"But Mom MUST have had the Lens before, if she beat Bongo before!" Akane insisted.
"Maybe it was stolen from her after that," Tatl thought.
"But wouldn't she had mentioned something like that to me or my sisters?"
"Not unless it happened sometime before you came along, no offense sweetie, but your mom is not a young woman."
"Hey! You're supposed to be my fairy," Ukyo injected. "I thought we were supposed to do the whole casual chat bounding thing."
"Well, maybe if you acknowledged I exist a bit more."
Ukyo's cute face softened somewhat. "...I do..."
Akane blinked, then got her thoughts back together. "But, but then why does Azusa have it down here at all?"
"Fate?" Navi suggested.
"Huh?!"
Navi continued: "Maybe this is where it belongs, maybe it was called back here by happenstance and chance, who knows, maybe after we're done with it, it'll accidentally fall down this well again."
"That's stupid!" Tatl retorted.
"If you've got a better explanation, then I'm all ears."
"We're out!" Link declared, crawling out of the cramped tunnel into a much larger chamber, Navi floating near him. Ukyo soon followed suit, and Akane scurried on all fours faster than she thought possible, just to be liberated from the claustrophobic space. Tatl flew past Akane and floated near Ukyo. Akane stayed close, if for no other reason than being near the only source of light in the dark, dark underground and being the only one without a free floating living lamp.
Akane resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her leggins, knowing she'd only get her hands even more soiled. 'I am never saying the castle clean staff had an easy job ever again!'
"Where'd Azusa go?" Ukyo looked around.
Tatl shrugged. "Shouldn't be too hard to find, just listen for the insane chatter."
"Up!" Navi shouted.
"I don't think she'd have gone through the ceiling, Nav..."
"No! Look up!"
Link didn't need to. He heard that ominous wind, and saw the unnatural shadow growing underneath Akane's feet. Always one to react before anyone else, Link grabbed Akane and threw her out of the way, as the giant undead hand landed on the ground where she had been standing. It wasn't Bongo. A second later before the thing could rise back up for another dive, it was splattered like a bug underneath Ukyo's battle spatula, the magic shock wave nearly knocking all off them off their feet. As soon as Ukyo lifted up her weapon however, three normal-sized versions of the monstrous hand began to scurry into the darkness in all directions. "Oh no! You're not getting away!" Ukyo swore. She made a hand gesture and punched the ground. "Din's Fire!"
A sphere of flame expanded from the impact points. The heroes braced themselves, but they only felt a summer breeze, but the sub-parts of the things were not so lucky and burst into flames, then ashes.
Akane breathed in deep. "What was that thing?!" She looked at Ukyo. "You know magic?!"
Ukyo just nodded. "Yes, I do, remember that visit to the Great Fairy? That was the spell she gave me."
"That creature was a Wall Master," Navi explained, "If it grabs you, it takes you back to the entrance of wherever you are. I think they're in the top ten of Hyrule's Most Aggravating Monsters list."
Link blinked. "There's a list?"
Akane felt sick at the idea having to go through that tunnel again, then remembered she'd have to anyway, to get out of here, and collected herself. She was a Sheikah, she was supposed to always be aware of her surroundings, and she hadn't been. "Any other Great Fairies you're planning on visiting?"
Ukyo took out the map given to her. "Well, this Great Fairy looks like she's in the middle of nowhere, but this one looks like she's... underneath the water in Zora's Domain?"
"I guess we need to visit her in this time then," Navi concluded. "When everything isn't covered with ice."
"The ice melted, remember?" Tatl pointed out and rolled her eyes.
"Huh? Oh! Right! But still it's best to visit it when Ganondorf isn't causing trouble, right?"
Akane stomped her foot and said: "What's best is that we find that Azuzu ghost or whoever and get that lens and get back to the future and save my mother!" She marched forward. 'I am a Sheikah. Shadow is my natural element! I am a nocturnal creature! I'm not afraid of the dark!'
Five minutes later, however...
"Ahhh!" Akane screamed as she ran in the opposite direction of the metal statue's sweeping heat ray.
"Who installed the laser monsters?" the child hero called Ukyo muttered as she took out a Goron bomb to blow the thing into pieces.
"You ever notice how their lower half has a big, ugly mouth?" Navi observed idly.
Ukyo looked at Link's fairy. "No! I'm too busy not getting incinerated! And why are you mentioning that now?!"
"Why not?"
"AGH!"
Another five minutes later... "Give me back my shield!" Link shouted as he sliced the disgusting leech like mollusk in half, leaving his undigested shield in its opened belly.
"These things again?!" Ukyo exasperated."And if these things eat armor or whatever, why don't they eat those giant chain locks? They're metal, right? Why do they have to eat up the stuff that's actually useful to us?"
Navi chirped: "Well you know what they say: Shield Eaters and World Leaders have many likes alike..."
"...That makes no sense."
Five more minutes later. Akane forced a rusted metal door open, revealing an undead Gibdo on the other side, which slowly reached out its arms for her throat. "Mommy!"
"No, a mummy!" Navi corrected reactively.
"That's what I said!" Akane lied, ducking.
Yet another five minute later... "TAKE THAT! And that! And that! And that!" Akane screamed, flinging her throwing needles at several innocent bats and anything else that moved.
Bystanders to this havoc, Ukyo looked at Tatl. "Where did all these monsters come from? Did Ganondorf send them here? Did he know about this place?"
"No, I don't think so. I think these things are just a 'natural' occurrence. They aren't really set up in a pattern to guard anything."
"Giant Armor eating leeches, rotating deathray eyed statues, and oversized undead hands that drag whoever grabs them back to the beginning of the place are natural?!"
"Well, maybe someone did put the Beamos down here for security, but it doesn't seem Ganondorf's style. They aren't...well organized."
"You think Azusa is working for Ganondorf at this point?"
"Maybe, but I doubt it. She didn't really seem fixated on Ganondorf's cause when we met her."
Meanwhile, below the spirit temple, the three other Poe Sisters were wondering where their fourth idiotic adopted sibling had wandered off to this time. They had broken Princess Kodachi, but it would still take more than a little time to condition a new personality in her. Stupid girl! Why had the witches recruited her, anyway? She had none of the hatred, envy, or anger her sisters-in-arms did, she was just a relatively harmless, mad spirit having trouble accepting that her life was over and leaving her collection behind. 'Idiot even suggested we should keep the brat pink because it's a cuter color than corpse blue! At least she's an extra set of hands...'
Having exhausted her needles, Akane began the slow task of retrieving them, having burned her tantrum out. 'Monsters, gunk, monsters, tight spaces, the air is so thick, I just want out of this awful place! Worthless ghost! If she wasn't dead, I'd kill her with my bare hands!'
"Do you think we've lost her?" Ukyo asked Link.
"Don't worry, I'm sure Azusa had to have come this way, so if he tried to leave the well she'd run into us."
"That isn't who I meant," Ukyo whispered.
Link blinked in naive confusion. The fairies groaned. 'I know Ukyo needed a family more than anything when she came to us,' Navi thought, 'But maybe the Deku Tree should have let Ukyo teach the Kokiri a few things about the outside world after all. I never thought about it, but Ukyo effectively lost a father twice. But at least she has memories of her biological parent, Link doesn't even have that. I wonder which one of them is more lucky.'
Akane placed her last kunai back in her belt. 'There. Maybe we should stop for a bit. Maybe that dumb ghost will run into us. Besides, I really think I need a rest.' She turned around to face her friends and screamed. The shout made the destined children dash to the sides of the narrow passage, as a giant skull nearly the size of the corridor came around the corner while madly babbling.
"Blablablablablabla!"
Link and Ukyo got goosebumps as the skull flew right past them, the green flames enveloping it, sucking the heat right out of their skin. A pair of ridiculously small bat wings flapped to either side of it.
"It's a Green Bubble!" Navi shouted, "Don't let its flames touch you! Or it's curse won't let you hold a weapon for a minute!"
"Since when do they grow this huge?!" Tatl gasped losing her composure. "And I thought only the blue ones curse you." It was at least ten times the mass of the Red Bubble the heroes had seen before.
Ukyo almost lost her battle focus at the name. "GREEN 'Bubble'? Who names these freaky things anyway?!"
Link drew the Master Sword, ready to sunder the thing, but Navi flew in front of him. "Wait! I don't think it noticed us! See? It's just flying along the path like it can't even see us!"
Then Link suddenly remembered he was holding the KOKIRI Sword, not the Master Sword... the Master Sword was back in the pedestal, in the Temple of Time. 'I didn't think how used I already was to holding it.'
However, Akane was straight in its path. Seeing the giant skull looming closer and closer put Akane's now child-like imagination into overdrive, conjuring up images too frightening to be comprehended by a rational mind.
"Mama, I wanna check out the fields at night."
"Akane-chan, you can barely hold your sword properly. We can't risk you going out. Stalchildren could kill you!"
"I'm not scared of a bunch of stale kids!"
Later, she was doing just what her mother had warned her not to do. "Ha! I knew I could go outside the castle town on my own! And the moon's so pretty out here without all those lights from Castle Town.. huh? What are you? No, stay back! Go away!"
"No, stay back! Go away!" Akane shouted. She edged into a wall as the Green Bubble mindlessly changed course and continued on its path.
Akane was instantly flanked by her team mates.
"Akane, are you okay?"
Akane shook her head and stood up. "Of course I'm fine!"
"You sure didn't sound fine," Link said sternly.
"Shut up!" Akane barked, "Unlike you two I'm not really a little kid! You guys are just kids that got changed into grownups! You said so yourself! While I'm a grownup made into a kid by these stupid time travel rules, so when I'm say I'm fine, that means I'm fine!"
The fairies' lights dimmed, Link and Ukyo took a step back, worry bubbling up in their guts.
"So let's go already! Just you watch! I'll take that---AAAAHHH!" And as Akane stomped foreword further down the seemingly endless path, she fell THROUGH the floor. It didn't break, open, or move, it was like Akane had fallen through air! They heard her scream fall for several more yards before they heard her give a grunt in parallel with a thud that she had hit the ground.
"AKANE!" Link shouted as he ran up to where Akane had fallen, before Ukyo and Navi grabbed him by the tunic collar.
"Link, don't be stupid!" Ukyo said. "You saw what happened? What did happen?!"
"I guess if you're going to build a place to protect something that can see through illusions, it's a good guess that whoever wants it can't see through illusions already, so it's a logical thing to guard the thing with." Navi said almost to herself.
"Whatever! Who cares!" Link snapped. "Come on! Let's go! You heard her! She's okay! I just know she is! Come on, Navi!" Link broke free from his friend and jumped into the fake floor image, vanishing much like Akane but much more controlled. Navi hesitated for half a second before flying down after him. She was his guardian, after all.
"Link!" Ukyo shouted. "You baka!"
Ukyo inched to where her two companions had vanished, until she felt where the real floor ended and the hole covered up by the sensory lie began. She carefully stuck her arm through the illusion floor, dainty but still muscular even at this age from a lifetime of outside play. She could smell rotting flesh and dirt rising up from the hole.
"Does Link's heart always have to be bigger than his brain?" Ukyo lamented, "Doesn't matter who it is, if someone's in trouble or something's wrong he's just got to fix it or help them. Maybe I should just wait for him up here, teach him about always rushing in... then again, I wouldn't be much of a real sister if I just left him hanging. Real sister? Where did that thought come from? Still, we're the only family either of us really have. Maybe I've always thought of Link as the brother I never got to have after Ranma's dad betrayed me." She shook her head. "Did I really just see Link as a replacement Ranma? No, Ranma liked us sparring cause it was fun for him. Link never wanted to fight... fighting was just something Kokiri never liked doing. Maybe Link's been right all this time and I should do the Kokiri thing and just let it go. Nothing I do to Genma is going to bring my Dad back, and there's nothing that thief can do to repay what I lost..." She sighed. "It's weird how that bloodlust I felt before just feels unnatural now that I'm ... me again? I'm going be that woman in seven years, no matter what I do. Maybe I should stop fixating on the family I lost and remember the family I have."
"Let's start now," Tatl said, reminding Ukyo that the yellow fairy was a independent part of the universe. And with force no one would suspect a fairy to have, she pushed her charge straight into the hole.
"TATL!"
"Sorry, Ukky.. but if you did any more soul searching, I think you might have been too late to help," Tatl said as she calmly floated down after her.
Link did a quick roll to avoid breaking his legs as he landed on the well's bottom layer. Navi thought: 'If this is where the water comes from, I don't wanna drink any!'
It wasn't a true chamber, truly just a hollowed out hole in the ground with tunnels, most of them blocked off by solid rock going off in several directions. Hugging one side of the 'chamber' was a nearly glowing, thick, sickly green pool of what could jokingly be called 'water'. It flowed with neither feed nor exit, crisscrossed with wooden beams... Link diverted his eyes before he couldn't lie to himself anymore that those were branches sticking up from the water instead of skeletons' hands and feet. Just behind the pool was a ladder apparently leading up to the upper level (hopefully).
Link heard a scream that was that anything but human and saw the ReDead limping towards Akane on the ground near the pool, every muscle in her body frozen in place by the thing's undead stare.
The monster's focus thankfully was totally on Akane, and without even giving it a first thought Link, cut down the disgusting mockery of life. It fell into a pile of its own broken flesh before dissolving into dirt and whatever else it was made from. Link sheathed his sword before he heard a girly wail behind him and saw Ukyo land on her rear with Tatl flying gracefully down with a too smug look on her face.
"Ukyo, are you hurt?" Link asked.
"Just my trust in my fairy guardian... Forget about me, how's Akane?"
"A ReDead was reaching for her, but I took care of it..."
Ukyo frowned slightly. "'How is she?' I asked. Not 'What happened?'"
'You two drive each other crazy like siblings,' Navi thought.
Link, however, instantly understood his error and turned to check on his friend. "Akane? You okay? Are you hurt anywhere? It's okay, you can move now, the ReDead's gone..."
A couple of Akane's muscles twitched before she cried: "Link!" And the little girl hugged onto the little boy, crying tears into his green tunic. "Link, I wanna go home! I wanna go back to Kodachi annoying me! I wanna go back to training in the castle courtyard! I wanna go back to failing at making Kasumi act more like a warrior than a hand maiden! I wanna go back to looking at Chancellor Kuno's ugly clothes! I wanna go back to hating how Mom still tucked me in at night and kissed me! I wanna, I wanna!"
Link looked at Akane in utter confusion. 'First she was scared out of her wits, then she's angry at everything, now it's like she's broken inside, what's going on?'
"Akane... what's wrong?"
"Link, I'm scared! I don't want to be here anymore! I hate it here! Let's go to that forest of yours and you can introduce me to all of your friends! Anywhere! Let's just get out of here!"
"Akane..." Playing this totally by ear, Link hugged her gently. "I don't believe that. Remember some days ago in Jabu-Jabu's belly? It was a lot more disgusting than this. And you're the one who saved my rear from that oversized Octorok."
"Link, that was seven years ago..."
"For me it wasn't! And anyone who'd do that, who'd go through Jabu-Jabu without even flinching I know is way too good and way too brave to break down in a place like this!"
Akane somehow seemed too cold in Link's arms as she said just above a whisper: "I could always remember that day, when we split up on the plains outside Hyrule Castle, after Ganondorf let us go... you went to the Temple of Time, I went after my family... I had no idea it would be the last time I'd see you two for seven years. But now I can remember it as clear as day."
Ukyo had a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach as she saw how ashen Akane's face looked as the little girl continued as if speaking to the shadows.
"I wasn't there to help them. The castle fell and I wasn't there to help them. I was a child, yet I was able to slay giant beasts... but I wasn't there to save them from a horde of thieves, freaks, and maniacs. My sisters at least were there. But I was the one with the most Sheikah training! And I wasn't there! Just like I wasn't there to protect Princess Kodachi! I hated the idea of having to be her bodyguard. She was spoiled and weird and I wanted nothing to do with her! So instead of being her shadow, like a Sheikah bodyguard is supposed to be, I stayed as far away from her as possible, and she vanished when I was supposed to be looking out for her! I kept thinking of all the horrible things I wanted to happen to her, all the sweet humiliations that would put her royal ego in place. I knew it would be precisely what she deserved! But... I never dreamed any of them would actually happen! Ganondorf probably murdered her himself before the castle even fell! Mom... never told the king I was the one who was supposed to be watching her. I didn't get in trouble because Mom LIED to the king for me!"
"That's because she LOVES YOU," Navi implored. The dirt around Akane shifted.
"I was a coward who didn't want to face punishment for my own choices. I was a coward who didn't want to follow you guys to what fate had planned for you in the Temple of Time. I was a coward who didn't do anything, and when she was needed the most." She let out a laugh as joyless as the ashes of a funeral pyre. "Nabiki always laughed and said that since I was such a tomboy, I'd never meet anyone who'd ever like me back. That I was too much of a hothead to form a bond with anyone. That I was too judgemental to ever find someone to forge a future with. That I'd die just like Sheikah live, alone. The only thing that's ever kept me going is that my family needed me, and that there was still one princess left to protect.... But my family DOESN'T need me! Never has! Never will! You're the ones armed with destiny at your backs, remember?! You don't need me! You'll just waltz in, take the lens, go kill Bongo Bongo, awaken what remains of the Sages, kill Ganondorf, save Hyrule, and could do it blindfolded, because that's what fate has degreed will happen! I'm just an add-on here! You could cut me away, and what you guys can do and will do won't change one bit! Someone who's of no use to anyone and can never hope to find someone to walk alongside them DESERVES to rot down here, where they can vanish to the world without anyone noticing..."
Link gasped when he saw the skeletal hands reach out of the dirt and grab onto Akane's kneeling legs and her backside. Ukyo saw them too. Link used his left hand to take out his sword and cut at the bones, but it was like he was hacking at solid stone.
Link looked in horror as Akane's pale body began to skink into the muck.
"You know, when I first met Ranma, I thought he was kind of cute... but he was already taken by that Gerudo girl... and that's how it's been for every other guy I've met. It's stupid, I've seen people who weren't even looking for someone else bump into their other half. And at the beginning, I just told myself that's perfectly fine by me, what did I care what Nabiki said? Or about having dead weight to drag around? I wish I had never met that baka Ranma! If I never had, then I'd have never felt these things to begin with! Whoever said 'better to love and lose, then never to love' was a idiot! At least then I'd never know what it was that I was missing out on! I am a Sheikah! Damned to the shadows! So why not sooner than later?"
She looked down at herself, and didn't react alarmed or scared in the least.
Link had had enough. He dropped his sword and shield and began pulling on one of Akane's small arms, pressing his little child muscles to their extreme. It look only two seconds for Ukyo to join him pulling at the other arm as Akane sank, the fairies pulling as well.
Akane realized what the forest siblings were doing and snarled: "Get the Hell away from me!"
"Fat chance!" Tatl barked.
Navi shouted out: "You think because the first nice guy you met was for someone else means there's no one out there for you? I didn't think your Mom raised idiots! You're not even halfway through life and you're saying the game's already over?!"
Link looked into the Sheikah child's red eyes. "Listen, Akane! You were right! This darkness is oppressive! Don't you see?! It's FEASTING on you! I'll admit I haven't know you as long as I should, but the person I fought alongside in Jabu-Jabu's belly wasn't someone who'd tear themselves apart on self doubt! You're no coward and have never been! You're the most stalwart person I know!"
Ukyo put all her weight into it: "Bongo Bongo is still sealed in this place right now, remember?! It's him! That thing! I can tell you right now that the little voice in your heart that's telling you you're no good or surplus isn't yours!"
Navi let go and flew right into Akane's face, not letting her dare look away! "And let me tell you something about destiny, little missy! Destiny tells you what tasks have been set before you! They don't guarantee you'll do them or that you'll succeed at them! That part is up to you! And there is NOTHING that say you have to or should do them alone!"
"And we're doing this..." Link hissed, putting his back into it. Ukyo felt her muscles scream. "With you!!"
"You..." Akane blinked, as if clouds faded from her eyes, color returned to her face, and in that moment the bones wrapped around her body shattered like they were made of chain sugar, and Akane's legs were even on the ground as if they had never sunk.
The sudden release in resistance had the three kids falling over backwards, hitting the dirty ground in a dog pile with Akane on top and the forest siblings on the bottom. After just laying there for several seconds, with the fairies orbiting around them, Akane laughed. In that second she felt more alive than she remembered recently being. Akane let herself feel the rush of the endless possibilities that youth offered but you never realized until after. All the weights and fears for a moment, just a moment turning to so much vapor, as the tykes slowly untangled themselves. Akane's laugh proved contagious and soon the two Hylians were laughing as well.
"So that's what they meant," Navi whispered.
"Huh?" Link looked at his guardian as the laughter settled down in the deep dark pit.
"The spirits, not the ghosts or ghouls we've been running into, but spirits, invisible... they've been whispering since we got here: 'Seek the eye of truth'. I thought they meant the lens, but I think now they were talking about something a wee bit different."
"I think you're right," Akane agreed, smiling, not caring about the dirty smudges all over her face, just like any child.
Link nodded and took a couple steps away from his friends and picked up his sword and shield and shouted to the darkness: "OKAY! NOW COME OUT!"
Navi wondered if Link had lost it. "Link?"
"I KNOW YOU'RE THERE! You aren't getting Akane or any of us! Akane even as a kid is way too stubborn to let herself start beating herself in the middle of things! So come out and fight face to face, you filthy coward! Unless poisoning someone with fake super imposed maniac depression is the only weapon you have!"
The ground near the heroes began to churn and boil like a blister as some THING slowly forced its way to the surface.
Akane gently pushed Link aside and stepped in front of him. "Leave this thing to me!" She said calmly and properly.
Link looked at his friend. "Akane?"
"I owe this thing! Nobody plays my emotions like a puppet on strings! I am Akane Tendo! A brave, frightening, and deathly skilled ninja! Of a proud and honorable line of Sheikah! With a family that loves me and friends who support me!"
She stepped forth. "You're nothing but a parasite feeding off of living peoples' weak points like a con artist! I don't know how many trophies you've collected since whatever brought you into this world spat you out! But you've already reeled in your last victim! Come and get me, you coward!"
And a thing out of her nightmares broke through the surface of the ground, but now Akane wasn't afraid to face it.
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(Posted Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:06)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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