The fairies hovered back as Akane charged at the abomination of life and death.
"That thing... It's name is Dead Hand!" Navi exclaimed. "Be careful! It's very dangerous!"
"That's different from normal how?" Tatl snapped.
The thing had a fat body that contrasted with its skinny, handless arms and its ostrich-like neck that ended with a skull-like face with skin stretched over it. The thing pushed it's body along towards Akane like a slug, shoving it's own mass along with neither legs nor feet. What was most revolting of it, however, was its flesh, as pale as a maggot and marked with large, open red scars.
Ukyo's stomach inverted itself as she nearly suffered flashbacks from that dead animal she had laid eyes on in Lost Woods. All the other undead horrors they had seen were just bones or dried out flesh, but this thing... Ukyo did her best to agree with herself that it was just her imagination when she saw little things squirming underneath the thing's pale skin.
The thing's neck bent down as its jaw opened impossibly wide, giving off a horrid stink of rotting flesh that caught the heroes off guard. The ReDead had at least smelled more of treated leather and graveyard soil.
Akane just held her breath and drew a kodachi from her back side (not trying to fight the flash of images of someone named after them) and breathed out as she slashed at the thing's face. After a couple of contacts the thing turned around with surprising speed, leaving Akane to attack its backside, which proved much more resistant to her slashes with its protective layers of dead flesh.
Even as Ukyo and Link circled it, the thing began to burrow into the dirt again and vanished, flaying dirt everywhere as it sunk out of view.
"We won?" Navi dared asking a moment before four snake-like arms the same color as Dead Hand's flesh wormed out of the ground like a fountain. Four grasping hands on poles longer than an adult Hylian were grabbing at the child heroes. The forest kids were far enough away, but Akane, as she was between all four of them, suddenly felt how one of them grabbed her head from behind, the dirty dirty bloody nails piercing into her skin.
"At least now we know how it got its name," Ukyo heard herself say.
"AKANE!" Link shouted, his Kokiri sword already drawn to cut his friend free.
"Stay back!" Akane snarled at him. "Stay back or I will fight you, too!"
Link stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the child Shiekah in bewilderment.
"Sorry! But I don't want your help!"
'Only a Sheikah...' Tatl thought.
Link was a selfless idiot. "Too bad!" He took a step forward.
"So sad!" Akane snapped back, her kodachi slicing cleanly through the boneless arm of corpse flesh, causing Link to step back again.
"Akane behind..." Navi started.
"See it this time!" Akane called. From the moment Akane was grabbed, it had already begun to emerge. The short drama between the heroes had given it a proper distraction to come out of the group to bite its prey, or at least, that's what it intended to do. Akane slashed its vulnerable head ruthlessly, causing the thing to let out a breathless groan.
Again it turned around and retreated back into the soil. However, Akane was prepared when the previously destroyed hand rose up from the dirt again.
"If you think I'm letting myself be infected by your dirty claws again you've got this coming!" Akane snapped, not caring if the thing understood or heard her or not. With fluid, almost artistic motions, Akane danced with her kodachi, cleaving the four hand snakes away in a matter of seconds, not wasting a single motion.
A bit slowly, as if unwilling, the pile of dirt rose again, revealing the thing's main body. Near mindless in its actions, the undead thing rose its neck up high along with its vulnerable head. Before Akane could test to see if its neck was as vulnerable as its arms, it brought its head down and that horrible stench made Akane gag. She withstood it, avoiding the thing's savage bite with its oversized teeth. Akane cut at its head again in a third barrage, slicing away at the dead skin and the empty eye sockets and skull underneath, until the skull finally broke in two right down the middle. Whatever dark force was keeping the thing moving could longer maintain the dead thing's locomotion, and with one last lifeless groan, its mollusk-like lower body fell over on its side with a powerful thud, turning to dirt and decomposing in seconds.
Akane took deep breaths, not caring about the bad stench. She looked at her friends with a tired, but happy and satisfied expression and placed her kodachi back in its sheath in another fluid motion.
Ukyo felt an odd sense of uninvolvement. "Er, aren't we supposed to take part in all the major battles in this quest?"
"That fight was just for show," the young Sheikah said to her friend. "You guys already helped me beat it."
"Just don't go mentioning it every fifteen minutes for the rest of our lives."
"Tatl!" Ukyo scolded her fairy.
"Just felt like saying it."
Link sighed. "Well, at least that's one less thing for us to worry about."
Akane nodded, smiling. "Now let's go see if we can find that ghost of..."
"That was amazing!" said an echoing feminine voice. "The way you heroically saved her from Dead Hand! The way she defeated it so elegantly! Azusa hasn't seen anything so fantastic since her Mikado left!"
Link, of course, automatically drew his sword. Ukyo put her hand on her spatula. Azusa either didn't notice or didn't consider seemingly mundane weapons a danger to her. The Poe sister floated down, wearing a tattered ballet dress.
It was odd for Ukyo and Link to meet this ghost what was apparently earlier than their first meeting with her. The spirit just zipped around to look at them. Besides having no concept of personal space, she made no hostile actions.
"Azusa came down here looking for Francoise and she finds a bunch of cute little kids fighting a heroic battle against Dead Hand! You remind Azusa of Mikado!"
"Mikado?" Akane asked. 'She couldn't be THAT Azusa.'
"Mikado... Azusa's partner! She and Mikado are the best dancers in Hyrule! Azusa not seen Mikado for long long time! But Azusa knows Mikado around here somewhere! Until then, Azusa has lots of friends to keep her company!"
"Who's Francoise?" Ukyo asked. No one thought to tell Azusa their names more for the strangeness of the situation than any precaution to prevent changes to the timeline.
"Francoise is right here." Azusa pulled out a teddy bear that was faded, dirty, and moth eaten. "Azusa lost Francoise a while ago, Azusa finally remembered where she last saw Francoise, Francoise of course forgives Azusa, isn't that wonderful?"
"Er..." Link spoke up. "We were looking for a pretty lens, we think we saw it with you, we really, really, REALLY need to help our friend's mom, could we have it?"
"This? Why do you want it? It's not cute," Azusa said, pulling out a purple, magnifying glass-shaped purple lens. "Azusa carried it just because it helped Azusa to see through some walls. Azusa doesn't need it now, you can have it." Not relating to the least out of compassion Azusa tossed the legendary magic artifact to Link without a second thought.
Link caught the lens, but Ukyo took it from him. "This is a magic item, remember? I'm betting only someone with magic can use it."
"I really need to visit the Great Fairy." Link sighed.
"Azusa and Francoise have to go now. Azusa's supposed to be helping her sisters give princess super special makeover, though no one listens to Azusa when she gives suggestions anyway. Azusa doesn't want to be in trouble with old hags again! Au revoir!"
'Princess?!'
"Hold on! Wait!" Akane called, but Azusa had already floated back up through the ceiling, no longer be restrained by the material lens of truth. "It can't be..." Akane shook her head. Without any more information, she wasn't about to let what she just heard drive her mad. But it had still planted the seed of the question into her mind. She felt her blade weapon. 'Kodachi, what happened to you?'
"Well we got the lens, and we're rid of that stupid ghost! Let's get out of this mud hole!" Tatl declared. Everyone nodded, having had enough of this hole of death.
Navi just had to ask: "With Mikado... do you think she was talking about Captain Mikado?"
Akane knew the answer, but didn't answer it directly at first, she simply spoke, not even looking at them: "Her full name is Azusa Shiratori. I heard a couple nobles at Hyrule Castle chatting about her once. Captain Mikado Sanzenin was her partner… they were pretty much called the best dancers in Hyrule. Azusa was always eccentric and Mikado always a playboy. They said that after Mikado rejected her, Azusa's eccentric attitude went into full blown insanity. She spent the rest of her days as a mad woman talking to random objects as if they were people. They were talking about how to divide up her home since she had no heirs or relatives."
Navi shook her head, "That's... so sad... she's dead and she doesn't even get to be with the guy she liked again? What a cheat."
"I wonder what's keeping her here in the world of the living then?" Ukyo asked.
"I can answer that," Link said. "Ganondorf!"
"Root of ninety percent of Hyrule's current troubles," Tatl quipped.
Akane looked at the Sheikah artifact Ukyo was holding. 'Mom, we're coming.'
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:41)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.