#Bellum is like a parasite to Linebeck

[smilesrobotlover]

Linebeck, Bellum, and Bellumbeck villain squad au

Linebeck is a captain who sails the sea searching for treasure, which includes stealing from the castle a lot and facing the head knight a lot. Meanwhile, Bellum is creature that despises the ocean king and wishes to steal his power and overthrow him. He does not care about the land of Hyrule, or any land really because of the people who disrespect his home, but he does like the people when they fall into the ocean, trapped and alone for him to feast upon their force. Linebeck and Bellum have met a few times, and frustratingly so, Linebeck evaded him many times.

When meeting the villain team, Bellum needs someone to possess to act as his vessel for when he’s on land. He originally has his eyes on the fierce and powerful first knight, but Linebeck ends up saving the first knight and loses his freedom, being forced into a puppet. It wasn’t what Bellum was going for, but he wasn’t complaining. He just hopes Linebeck is a strong enough vessel to keep him alive on land. But Bellum doesn’t know that they both rely on each other with surviving this whole ordeal.

[waywardsalt]

i think the key ‘problem’ with me looking into darker aspects of bellum x linebeck and struggling with it is that ive put too much work into humanizing and developing bellum

[catastrophicarts]

dump of pages related to my villainbeck au so they’re all in one place aha,, the gist is that Linebeck makes a deal with Bellum out of a desperation for power. He’s not fully possessed, but Bellum acts more like a parasite that drains his life force in exchange for greater strength and courage. Unfortunately that means that in order to keep Bellum from killing him, he has to find…replacement sources of life force to keep him satisfied.

More art + explanation under the cut

He’s the captain of the ghost ship, and the Cubus Sisters treat him as their “father” and force sailors to bring them back to him after they “rescue” them. If they don’t perish in the dungeon, then Linebeck finishes the job himself, though he prefers it doesn’t come to that. When Tetra boards the ghost ship, Linebeck and Link both fall overboard, and he accompanies Link on his adventure under the guise of a cowardly sailor that escaped from the ghost ship. In reality, he’s trying to lure Link back to the ship so he can give both him and Tetra to Bellum. In the end, he can’t bring himself to kill Link, and Bellum possesses him fully in order to try to kill him himself.

Link of course wins, though, and Linebeck is left barely alive (Bellum tries to fully drain his life force in a last ditch effort to defeat Link), with severe nerve damage from Bellum attaching himself to his spine, and incredibly poor vision. Link decides to give him a second chance and helps nurse him back to health, though Linebeck doesn’t feel like he deserves it.

[ordon-shield]

Ok, so recently I saw this post by @tenten18282 and the art got me thinking so gave some AUs based on it! (Using the LU names since it’s what they used but this could also be seen as general LoZ).

(Content warnings for the expected, mention of suicide, some mild body horror, character death).

Bellum!Wind

It starts when Bellum takes over Wind instead of Linebeck. Linebeck has to take up the Phantom Sword to fight him. He tries his best but it’s not enough, even when he’s able to attack the weak spot with the help of Ciela, it’s too late. Bellum is a parasite that’s now fully integrated with Wind’s body, making it impossible to separate the two of them without killing him. Oshus appears, saving Linebeck, Ciela, and Tetra, but leaving Wind behind.

In the aftermath they end up in an unwilling partnership of sorts. Bellum gives Wind the freedom to do the human things like eating food or talking because it’s more convenient that way, but controls the body most of the time. At one point Wind tries to get rid of both of them, with the logic that at least Bellum would be dead, but it doesn’t work, and in the aftermath he starts to become more cynical about everything. He slowly starts to resent the freedom of the people caught by the Ghost Ship, working more with Bellum, and offering them cruel choices with no good options a

Ganon!Hyrule

It starts when he’s caught by servants of Ganon looking to revive him using his blood, but he manages to escape halfway through the ritual and at first, everything seems fine. Then he starts to hear the whispers, subtle nudges that feel like his own thoughts. They build on his paranoia, anyone could be an enemy, they drive him to get stronger, to keep himself safe. Eventually he notices that where he once would have risked his life standing between a traveller and a monster attacking them, now he quietly moves away before he’s even noticed. After that, the whispers in his mind shift in their goals. Now they tell him he should be fighting the monsters, that he should be figuring out how to use his magic to take out more at once, that he should be making them fear him. When a group of monsters he’s been going after particularly ruthlessly offers their loyalty if he stops hunting them down… why not take the deal? It keeps everyone safe after all and he doesn’t even have to fight.

Through all of this, he starts getting dreams, ones he only remembers impressions of at first, of a desert in the distant past. Trusting his own mind less and less, he decides that he should give the Triforce to the Zeldas to protect, but the moment he sees them he has to fight the overwhelming desire to attack. His case is more one of a gradual merge, the centuries of memory held by Ganon and the strength of his emotion overriding what was there before. He still remembers his past, still cares for the people he knew… it just takes a lower priority now.

Vaati!Four

At the end of the final fight with Vaati in The Minish Cap, he realises he’s about to loose, so he uses the Mage’s Cap in a last ditch effort to survive. Only one person comes back from that fight and he looks like Four… but he’s completely lost his memories. His grandfather and Zelda try to help him recover his memories, but he can’t seem to manage it, not even remembering some simple everyday things. He discovers an interest in magic, something that gets attributed to his experiences with magical items during his quest, and he tries to see if there’s a magical method to recover his memories but can’t find one. He also has off dreams, ones where he’s attacked by his own shadow screaming in fury.

For the next few years, everything is peaceful— until Hyrule is attacked by Ganon, a Gerudo man corrupted by the ancient darkness of a magical trident, and Zelda asks him to draw the Four Sword once more. He draws it, splitting into four aspects of himself, but Ganon takes advantage of his distraction to steal away his shadow, giving it a physical form. The Shadow joins Ganon willingly on the condition that he be offered the power necessary to defeat the four he came from. Of the four heroes, taking the names Green, Blue, Red, and Vio, the latter is the most different. He’s much better at magic than the other three, something they attribute to him being the smart one, and he keeps pushing for them to go after their Shadow and defeat it.

Eventually they end up fighting the Shadow and that’s when the truth comes out — the Shadow is actually the original Four, and the one that drew the Four Sword was Vaati possessing his body. When they split, Vio was able to access some of Vaati’s lost memories. Before the others can fully process the reveal, Vio kills the Shadow by shattering the mirror he was tied to. After defeating Ganon, they debate over whether they should merge back together or not, as they could regain their memories of being Vaati, and they’ve grown used to their life as the hero of Hyrule. In the end they agree and merge back into one. Zelda is there to welcome them home and realises too late that they’ve betrayed her, with Vaati revealing himself, and extracting the light force inside her.

Majora/Fierce Deity!Time

In the final fight with Majora in the heart of the Moon, Majora sees how powerful he is with the Fierce Deity mask and decides to take that power. The mask is forced onto his face, over the mask of the Fierce Deity which fights back, trying to protect him, but during the fight they become irrevocably intertwined with each other and to Time. He technically still has control of his body, but he’s sharing his mind with two other entities that have strong opinions on what he should do. Even if he he tries to just ignore them he ends up with debilitating headaches that keep him from doing anything at all. For a while he tries to just stay on the Moon, but the entities inside his head push him to leave, Majora wanting to terrorise Termina once more, and the Fierce Deity wanting to defend it. Leaving the Moon, Time soon ends up doing something he regrets and in his panic, he plays the Song of Time, resetting back to the First Day. He doesn’t have to worry about Majora, the mask he brought back with him replacing the one that was originally in that timeline, but now he has a way to erase anything he does at the urging of the mask now fused to his face.

Sometimes he’ll follow the desires of the Fierce Deity, befriending and helping the residents of Termina. But sometimes… he listens to Majora instead, taking what he’s learnt through the cycles against those he once considered friends. Sometimes they even summon the Moon once more, and wait for the last possible moment to play the song and set it all back to the beginning.

[fearless2ndmate]

✂

✂ - a vivid memory 

Veins froze and limbs stiffened; a breath caught in his chest as a cold sweat along with the freezing monstrous rain drenched the hero’s body. Fear often accompanied courage for the hero to bring himself to his feet in the face of adversity... But this face was much too familiar...

Bellum had been too quick for Link; quickly bringing him to his knees only for Linebeck to suddenly defend him, nay, sacrifice himself in his own act of courage. Seeing the parasitic demon attach itself to the sailor made Link’s stomach clenched. The way the color drained from the man’s face, how his eyes rolled back and his movement slowed to a drunken stumble, and finally, the way his last words slowly dragged out made Link sick. In a way, it was like watching Linebeck die...But what was to come was much worse. 

Having to fight someone he had once resented but grew closer to scrambled the boy’s mind. It didn’t help that beforehand he had witnessed him being possessed so now he’s to kill Link against his own will...

He wanted to beg for the man to fight it, to remember who he is...but Link would have wasted his breath. With a being such as Bellum...there was no way for a human to fight back against its influence. With his mind fogged, Link suffered many blows from his opponent before Celia had to pull him together.

“Link! I know it hurts, I-I know it’s scary but that-- that isn’t Linebeck anymore okay? You have to fight him. Linebeck gave his life so that you can finish Bellum off. If not for everyone’s sake, honor what he gave for you!”

Link wanted to protest, he wanted to shout how he couldn’t and doesn’t want to...But she’s right as much as Link doesn’t want her to be...

The hero slowly backed away from the brute and took a breath to clear his mind. Emerald eyes now bore fury into the suit of armor before him and his grip on his sword turned his knuckles white.

Honor him...

“Are you ready, Link?”

“...’m ready..”

[catastrophicarts]

Yeah I like this character a normal amount (makes an AU, makes an AU, makes an AU, makes-

More art + information under the cut <3

Note that bc I'm a Jolbeck shipper a lot of these AUs feature the ship.

Villainbeck! Instead of being motivated by greed, Linebeck is motivated by power. Unfortunately, he's also a massive coward and not very strong. This leads him to make a deal with Bellum in exchange for more power, turning him into a permanent Bellumbeck (but unlike canon Bellumbeck, he's not fully possessed. Bellum is more like a parasite). The catch? Bellum is constantly draining his life force, and he has to lure other sailors to their demise to feed to Bellum in his place, with the hopes that it will slow down the process. He's the captain of the Ghost Ship, but he falls overboard with Link during the beginning of PH before he's able to give him and Tetra to Bellum. His coat hides Bellum on his back, so Link is none the wiser for the majority of the story. His cowardice is an act in order to make Link let his guard down and bring him back to the Ghost Ship so he can finish the job.

This one is technically two different AUs that both feature Linebeck as a werewolf. The first centers around Linebeck, a cowardly merchant just trying to stay under the radar, and Jolene, a hunter who's determined to finally bring down the wolfman that's been terrorizing the area every month. She makes a promise to protect Linebeck, which is only a problem due to the fact that unbeknownst to her, he is also the wolfman she's sworn to kill. Whoops.

The second on is much more straightforward. It's werewolf Linebeck and vampire Jolene.

This one is just Linebeck as a furry okay what more do you want from me.

And this one is just Hanahaki disease. Also straightforward.

Personality Swap! Linebeck is the capable but harsh pirate while Jolene is the cowardly sailor with a bit of an ego. Not a roleswap, so Linebeck is still Link's companion throughout the events of PH, he's just a lot more helpful since he can actually handle himself in a fight.

Kidbeck! This one is a bit more complex to explain. Linebeck gets turned the same age as Link by whatever magical entity your heart desires in order to teach him a lesson about the way he treats him. What the lesson is supposed to be, he has no idea, but he can't turn back until learns it. He gets separated from Link and found by...Jolene, who doesn't recognize him and he's determined to keep it that way. Unfortunately, she's not to keen on helping him get back to the SS Linebeck due to her grievances against the captain. She just doesn't know that this kid she's pouring her heart out / complaining about him to is actually the captain himself, who is rethinking everything he thought he knew about why she was mad at him in the first place. He just wants to get turned back to normal so he can figure this whole mess out.