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jumpchain-drop · 5 years ago

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Chapter 4.22: 9.65 Years

Year 10, day 237: I’ve explored the most dangerous dungeons known to Pokémonkind, fought the most dangerous monsters, survived three weeks in Hell, and lasted two months in a constant game of cat-and-mouse with a cabal of witches. And yet this day, where everything came to a head, is perhaps the most intense day of my life.

Over the last week, the enemy fleet attacking the Hylian towns intensified, and Cody’s navy had its hands full defending them, which meant that none of them were available when a large force of enemy ships approached Dragon Roost at dusk today. The only ships available were Firma Fortress’s personal fleet, which set out the moment we received word. I was in said fleet, and had the Phantom Sword, with the Phantom Hourglass inside, in a scabbard at my hip and my hammer on the other side, and Twig keeping close to my shoulder. It hadn’t occurred to me then how strange it was that the ships attacking the Fortress were actually getting lighter in their assault over the same time period – the reason why is so obvious in hindsight.

We learned quickly that not only did the enemy have a bunch of ships, but a pair of Big Octos. Monsters like these haven’t been seen since Ganondorf’s death. Seriously, where has she been keeping these?! ...It only occurs to me now that there’s probably other islands out there. Hyrule wasn’t the entire world, after all. They thankfully didn’t take long to go down to cannon fire.

“There’s still a lot of ships out there,” I mentioned to L’ourse. “We only have five.” Cody and his shop boat were at Windfall so he could help the effort there; he was no military commander, but he was good at supply tracking and having a fuckton of metal flowers salvaged from the seafloor to use as cannon ammunition in a pinch. Maria was still on L’ourse’s ship, putting out fires that broke out from bombs that hit us, with her boat being piloted by one of L’ourse’s crewwomen.

“It not be an issue, Mr. Naskema,” she said. “My crew will bow to no monster!”

And that’s when a swarm of Miniblins broke out from below deck.

Elmily, Maria, L’ourse, and I took a moment to get over the surprise before we went in swinging. Maria resumed Azumarill form and started throwing down Bubble Beams, while Elmily took human form with one of the ancestrial swords to join L’ourse and me in hacking our way through the ambush.

More monsters started coming out of the hold. After the Miniblins came the Bokoblins and Moblins, and they fought relentlessly. We could only stim the tide; the hatch had been blown away and there was nothing we could use to block the door. Meanwhile, the cannon fire was still going on, and with the main ship distracted, the four smaller ships failed to hold the line and fell back to the shore. The warships sailed up and began deploying their monsterous crews onto Dragon Roost Island, separated from the Rito and their defenses only by a Manaphy, a pirate, and two swordsmen.

“What is this, the Ark of Yamato?!” I cried as I hefted a Moblin overboard. “How did they all get in there?!”

“Because it was within that I brought them out!”

And that’s when Anita emerged from the hold, flying into the air and holding her halberd in her talons.

“Anita!” I found myself shouting.

“I’d love to trade quips, Robert, but I have more pressing matters to attend to for my coronation. Don’t worry, I will attend to you soon.”

“Come back here!” I shouted after her as she turned into a Latias and flew off toward the island.

“Me crew can handle these beasties, Mr. Naskema!” L’ourse shouted over to me. “You get after that scallywag!”

“I’m coming with!” Elmily added, returning to Korok form to evade a pair of attacks and make them run into each other. “I’m still a better fighter on land!”

Taking Elmily in my talons, I flew off after Anita.

More than a few monsters had managed to sneak their way past the shoreline, but the Rito had heeded my warnings and prepared numerous traps that held them off and even killed several of them. While they did defend their island well, however, they had a tactical vulnerability that wasn’t their fault because I was the one that made the tactical error: they had no compensation for Anita turning into a Latias. They were birds, and when I had told them that she would be able to fly at tremendous speeds, they thought tremendous speeds for birds. But she was a jet engine. She blazed past their defenses before they could even finish aiming as she turned straight up towards the peak of the mountain.

“Just as I thought,” I muttered, flying as hard as I could. “She’s going after Valoo!”

The dragon hadn’t been sitting completely idle during the entire battle. He had been observing the action intently, but he hadn’t started to take direct action, however, until monsters landed on the shore, and a big guy like him took a while to get ready. A while enough that he only just managed to get airborne when Anita rammed him with a Dragon Breath, staggering him back. He screeched something at her, but the only ones who had any chance of understanding it weren’t around, and she was already circling around for another pass anyway.

The wind carried some of her words to me: “Like I haven’t practiced for this a hundred times.”

Valoo unleashed his fire breath, but she was too fast to hit and landed two more of her own in the process. Then she surprisingly broke off and pelted him with a Mist Ball. Enraged, he flew after her.

That’s what I realized what exactly she was doing: she was luring him away. “Wait, Valoo, stop!” I cried after him, beating my wings as hard as I could to catch up. “It’s a trap!”

But it was too late – at that moment, Anita shot up into what vaguely looked like a shuttle loop before coming down on Valoo’s back, right between his wings, with a Zen Headbutt. But after she made contact, she didn’t stop. She just kept pushing, pushing him downwards. His wings fought to lift, but even a dragon’s wings couldn’t match the raw power of Anita’s thrust.

Then it really hit me. She wasn’t luring him away from the island. She was luring him over the ocean.

Valoo slammed into the water with a mighty crash. Massive waves rolled out, bowling out a tsunami. Most of it was on the other side of the island from the beachhead, so the mountains took the worst of it, but water still washed up from behind and threw everyone on the beach off balance into a chaotic mess.

I could barely avoid falling out of the air in shock.

“T-This can’t work, right...?” Elmily said, the fear in her voice apparent. “Greatfish Island was named for Jabun, a giant fish. Surely Valoo won’t be affected by the curse…!”

I really wish I knew. I also really wished I could help, but I was barely to the mountain itself. As I tried to finish the journey, I could only watch helplessly as Valoo tried to get out of the water, only for Anita to blast him back under with Dragon Breath or Zen Headbutt again. Thirty seconds passed, and then he stopped coming back up.

I tumbled as I landed at the summit of Dragon Roost Island. Medli was there (not sure of when she arrived), and she was absolutely terrified. “Lord Valoo! Lord Valoo!” she was crying over and over to where the dragon had gone under, her eyes filled with tears. “I tried to warn you…!”

“Medli...” My mind was a blank. What the fuck do you say to someone who saw their god die?

“He will be fine.”

Anita landed before us, poofing back into her Rito form as she made contact.

“No doubt Jabun will be able to rescue him before he drowns,” she said as calmly as if she was discussing the weather. “But he will be out of my way. The Rito will not be needing a guardian entity anymore anyway; I will always be able to protect us.”

Medli’s eyes burned with wrath. “You… You monster!”

“A monster? Please,” she replied, her tone unchanging. “I’m just as much a Rito as you are. You’re just too domesticated to see it. In any case, you’ll no doubt find a much better job than attendant to an irrelevant god in my new world.”

“That’s far enough, Anita,” I interrupted, stepping forward in front of Medli and drawing the Phantom Sword, wreathed in flame from Twig’s power. “You and your army have done enough damage already. This… All of this… What’s even the point of it?”

“I told you, ten years ago,” she said, looking at me with eyes that even as gold as they appeared were bitter cold. “Prove you have the strength worthy to win my loyalty. So far, I am not impressed.”

I looked back to Medli. Her range was supplemented with confusion. “Get out of here and help the other Rito,” I told her. “We’ll handle her.”

She gave me a nod and hurried off down the mountain.

“If you hope to stall me for Valoo’s return, it will not work,” said Anita. “I have plotted every detail. Jabun cannot swim nearly so fast.”

“I’m here too, Anita,” Elmily said, turning back to a Torterra. “You can’t beat both of us.”

“You think so? I doubt it. After all, you’re stuck on the ground.” She flapped her wings, her halberd almost hopping to her talons, and she took to the sky. Elmily growled and try to erupt an Earth Power underneath her, but she was quickly out of range.

“She’s right...” she moaned. “None of my attacks have that kind of range.”

“I have an idea!” I told her. “Turn back to a Korok and take the Sword, and I’ll fly up there after her carrying you.”

“I don’t know… My human and Korok bodies are too different.”

“Just swing it at her when you get close and don’t let go! C’mon, we can’t let her get away!”

And a minute later, it must have been a strange sight, a Rito carrying a Korok wielding a magical sword while a red fairy fluttered nearby as the whole procession flew towards another Rito with a halberd.

“Alright, Anita, let’s end this-”

“Human, Sandslash, pangolin.”

“...Huh?”

“This is the only form you have with flight. The form where you either fly with your arms or use your hands to wield a weapon.”

“...I don’t like where you’re going with this- ACK!” I barely managed to dodge the initial halberd thrust of her attack against me. But it managed to scratch my leg, and in my pain, I released Elmily. She quickly managed to unfurl her Deku Leaf and began drifting away, but she had to drop the Sword to do so.

“Elmily!” Twig cried after her.

“You were a fool to follow me up here,” she said, attacking viciously with the weapon in her talons that I barely managed to avoid anything deeper than a flesh wound. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on you – on everyone, but especially you. You’re good with a hammer and that sword, but you’ve never learned how to fight in the air. You imagine me to be as dumb as a monster that makes itself vulnerable after some of its attacks?!” She attacked from a weird angle, and my attempt to dodge it let her cut my delivery bag from my back, where it fell down and missed the summit – and taking with it my Reviver Seed supply. “Even the other Rito would not have been able to help you. Look at them, laying traps for monsters instead of taking them head-on. This is what being relegated to Hylians’ postal workers has done to the species!”

“Look out!” Twig suddenly shouted.

She twirled in the air, swinging the non-bladed end of the halberd at me – and it was only as it was coming at me that I noticed that, attached to the other end with a chain, was a lantern that emitted sickly blue smoke. Thanks to Twig’s alert though, I managed to flap back to avoid the lantern itself, but the smoke grazed me and I ended up inhaling a bit of it.

I recovered from my brief bit of coughing to look up and see Anita… smirking. I quickly learned why when my arms started malfunctioning and I stared to fall out of the sky toward the rocky mountaintop below. The landing was really rough, but I’m thankful I didn’t go through the crack in the middle. My vision was swimming, and whatever that smoke did stacked on top of the exhaustion I was building up all day, and I couldn’t find the energy to get back up.

“Naskema!” I heard Elmily shout.

Twig was quickly next to me. “Naskema, get up! You gotta get up! She’s- oh no, she just set Elmily on fire!”

I tried, I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t. I was starting to black out.

Twig fluttered away. “She’s going down! She’s- oh sweet merciful goddess, she landed in a pool of water! I think she’ll be OK- H-hey, what’s Anita doing with that black smoke...?”

At that point, everything went dark.

I’ve had to rely on the testimonies of the others to understand what happened afterward.

Anita’s lantern was a Poe lantern, which could produce different kinds of smoke but didn’t work in direct sunlight – which explained why she waited until dusk to attack. The red smoke was basically fire, and she had used it to attack Elmily when she tried to get to me after I fell. The black smoke spawned Poes from where it landed, which she commanded to pick me up and deliver her my Phantom Sword – Twig recalled the line, “Even you will get your second chance. I will not have a single Rito left.”

L’ourse had just a rough a time. Multiple Poes and Redead broke out of the hull as soon as the battle with Valoo had begun, almost as if they were waiting for me to leave, almost as if they’d be sure my weapon that could hit the intangible wasn’t available. With no way to hit the Poes with consistency and the Redead locking them in place with their screeches, the ship was quickly overrun. I understand more than a few of them died. Everyone else was captured and tied to the mast below decks, including L’ourse and Maria.

The beachhead also broke down. The monsters somehow managed to recover from the tsunami faster and captured all of them as well.

It was an unmitigated disaster. The monster army took Dragon Roost Island and began rounding up the Rito. Many of them tried to fly away, especially after Valoo fell, but the Poes all intercepted them. They were all pulled to the ground and clapped in lines of chains.

That dark vision had come to pass...

But it seemed it wasn’t the island she was after. For after Anita had captured the Rito, she ordered them escorted aboard L’ourse’s ship. It was soon overcrowded with prisoners – the Rito race weren’t exactly numerous, but the ship really wasn’t intended to hold that many people. Nonetheless, the monsters found a way to cram them all into the holds, and as favorable winds started to blow, the ship set sail…

...for the World of the Ocean King.

I was jolted awake by a surge of energy I recognized as being a Reviver Seed. Which I guess was good, given ordinarily I’d spend the next several minutes groggily trying to figure out what was going on. Reviver Seeds, however, wasted no time getting your senses back in gear.

“That just figures,” Anita grumbled from where she stood in front of me. I tried to stand up, only to find I was tied to a pole. “It would explain why Terra was protecting them so fiercely.”

“What did you do to her?!” I demanded, struggling against the chains that held me. Not that I had any slack to work with – it was so tight I couldn’t force myself to change form.

“Don’t get in a tizzy, she’s alive. I didn’t need her, so I left her behind. If you ask nicely once I’m Queen, perhaps I’ll let you go meet her.” I only had time to freshly glower at her before she continued, “Speaking of, it’s time my coronation began,” and she turned and walked away.

And that let me focus on what was going on around me.

I was within the arena of a large coliseum. I remember exploring it when L’ourse and I were adventuring in the remains of the Cobble Kingdom. Every seat in the stands was filled with chained-up Rito, patrolled on the ground by Moblins and the air by Poes. A massive dais sat raised in the middle, a pedestal in the center holding up the Phantom Hourglass. I looked around; all my other tools and weapons, including the Phantom Sword, sat on a table off to the side, guarded by a Bokoblin.

Anita stood on the dais and turned to address her captive audience. “Fellow Rito, my esteemed flock, I am so happy you were all able to join me tonight for this momentous occasion – my coronation as your Queen and new ruler. My apologies for what seem like a sudden usurpation, chief, but even you must agree I deserve the position after what I have done and will continue to do for our people.”

To say the crowd was hostile would be an understatement. It wasn’t hard to imagine them flinging tomatoes if they had any and weren’t being held prisoner. The resulting uproar was so much that the monsters had to poke them back to being quiet.

“Clearly, my work is too brilliant for commoner minds to understand,” she continued, seemingly completely unphased by her hostility. “I shall explain it in simple terms then. For what I have already done, you need only look around you, for I have brought us to a new world! A world where the ocean is not cursed with spite! A world where the gods have not forsaken us! A world where anyone can swim freely! A world where we no longer have to pretend to be birds and slave away in service to the Hylians to survive day to day!”

The crowd was still mad; only outrage over being taken from their homes being the main topic seemed to change.

“As for what, I will continue to do, I have already hinted at it.” She waved her halberd towards the pedistal. “Behold – the Phantom Hourglass! An artifact capable of rewinding time, sitting in this circle of runes that’s visible to anyone not in the peanut gallery.” I just growled in response to the quick look she gave me. “The past ten years, I’ve poured into creation of this magical mechanism of spacetime resonance. With this, I shall rewind our evolution, and we… shall return to our true form – of Zora!”

“Literally not how evolution works!” I blurted out, drawing her attention. “There’s been generations between now and the first Rito! You can’t just hit undo on all that! Especially since the Hourglass can only go back twenty-fire minutes! It will never work, and you’re mad if you believe otherwise!”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Anita said, flashing a smirk at me. “It is true, it can only rewind twenty-five minutes… with the paltry amount of Sands of Hours it currently contains.”

I immediately didn’t like where this was going. Cody had told me that the Sands of Hours that filled the glass were manifested life force – almost like his Force Gems, but shrunk down to sand grains.

“You’re never going to find that much Sand!” I said, recalling something Bolt and L’ourse told me. “Massive monsters made entirely of Sand once lived in this world, and the amount they each had would last two minutes! There’s not enough life force in the universe to rewind generations!”

“Is there? Is there really? I remember something quite differently. Bring him in!”

A pair of Moblins entered from one of the arena doorways, between them dragging someone, also in chains and looking very beat-up, and threw him into the arena.

“Cody?!” poured from my mouth. (I would later learn a squadron of Poes commanded explicitly to capture him had managed sneak through Windfall’s defenses.)

“N-Naskema...” he barely got out before being cut off by Anita planting the butt end of her halberd on his back.

“I remember reading about the power this one possesses,” she said. “The ability to create Force Gems at will and have them be accepted as currency, as well as turn them back into energy later. But it never said that creating them costs energy in the first place.”

“T-That makes no sense!” I said. “It naturally follows that he would have to invest his own energy into the Force Gems he creates! Otherwise he would effectively have infinite money, and that’d be broken as fuck!”

“I-It does…!” he got out, only for her to push the halberd down on him.

“That is not what the text says. That is the only thing that matters. Sands of Hours are nothing more than grain-sized Force Gems. You, Cody, are going to provide all the Sand I need.”

“N-Never…!”

“That wasn’t a request. See, this rune circle has a secondary function. It will draw the Sand out of you automatically. And as a courtesy to my fellow Rito, since no one here will be leaving until after I’ve restored us to Zora, I have prepared a counterbalance to speed things up. Bring him here!”

The Moblins that brought Cody in were quickly on opposite sides of me. One of them sucker-punched me in the temple, dazing me enough that I couldn’t react between them taking me off the pole and cuffing me. They marched me over to the dias, not letting go as they brought me over a spot on the intricate magic circle that covered it.

“Being alien to all these worlds makes your Force quite interesting,” she said to me. “Your presence will let me draw minutes worth of Force from him in mere moments. It will probably be quite painful for both of you for the next, oh, several weeks, but it is a price I, in my position as Queen, am willing to pay.”

“Fucking hell, Anita! You’ve completely lost it!” I yelled as I struggled against the Moblins’ grips, only for them to beat up on me the moment I got close to breaking free.

“You are the one that have lost. Accept that, and let your failure be to the benefit of this world during your last moments on it. I will be sure to take good care of it.” She turned and started walking to the pedestal. “Well, no time like the present. It’s time my coronation properly bega-”

Suddenly, a swhing ran through the air, and a saw a bolt of metal shot past my vision. Anita must have saw it to, because she flinched back and stopped walking.

“What was…?”

And then the Phantom Hourglass shattered.

I’m not sure what happened right afterward. Some kind of… wave of something exploded out, killing all the monsters in the arena and blowing everyone else off their feet. The moment I got my senses back, I got back up, made easier from how they cuffed me in the front.

“What?! WHAT?!” Anita was screaming. “NO! The Hourglass!” The relic had become a pile of broken glass on the pedestal, and planted at the edge of the magic circle was the arrow that had shot through it. “How…?!” She looked where the arrow had come from, as did I. “I-It can’t be…!”

Standing at the top of the coliseum, lowering the bow from where he fired it, was Shadow, standing proudly and glaring down at with eyes alight with… I couldn’t make it out at that distance, but he told me he imagined it was justice.

“How…?!” Anita got around her choking on her rising anger.

“Because you made your choices to serve your own selfish interests,” he called down. “I made my choices to serve my team. Including the choice to know the exact moment I could definitively stop you.”

“You were tied up! I saw you tied up!”

“Arr, matey, but ye forget the first rule of pirating!” L’ourse’s voice came from the vomitorium below him. “Never imprison a pirate captain on her own ship! She might know how to get out of it!”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone scream as primally as Anita did. “GET THEM!!” she yelled before she turned into a Latias and barreled up and at Shadow.

The sound of L’ourse’s red ocarina sounded in my ears. “Have at them, lassies!”

With that, the island became a war zone.

The monsters were converging towards Shadow and L’ourse, only to be met by not only them, but their remaining allies. Shadow had Anita’s attention perfectly (and kept it with some well-timed Taunts) and they were launched away from the building, leaving the monsters little tactical knowledge to know not to run into the massive chokepoint that was the vomitorium. Hilariously, Zorro actually turned a couple of them into frogs.

Me, I had already turned into a Sandslash and broke out of my cuffs before grabbing the Phantom Sword and my bag, then flapping up to the swarms of Rito now trying to get away from the fight now that the monsters were distracted. Some of the Poes tried to attack them, but I slashed them away and cut through as many of their chains as they could.

“Get to safety, quickly!” I said, depositing Cody (who had fallen unconscious and I had carried up) into Quill’s arms.

Most of them were fine with that; they couldn’t fly with the chains on their wings, but picking up weapons from some of the fallen enemies, they were able to free more and get away on the opposite side of the coliseum. Medli, however, wanted to help. When she managed to take out a Bokoblin with a couple swipes of her harp, I was convinced.

That’s when it started raining. Given the night was quite clear to this point, I suspect Zorro’s Rain Dance – or, rather, Manaphy’s.

Using Dig, I got us to the front of the coliseum, behind ally lines. It took me a bit to take in the chaos that was the battlefield. L’rouse and her remaining pirates, along with Bolt, had been pushed back to the far end of the vomitorium. Out at a nearby patch of sea, Manaphy had just sunk one of the Big Octos while Maria the Azumarill held the other two back with an empowered Bubble Beam. Most of the bare land on this side was caught in a battle between Shadow and Anita… and a giant puppet of purple spheres that vaguely resembled a Latias.

God-fucking-dammit, I hated that boss. Honestly, most of the bosses you needed to fight with the Boomerang in Wind Waker were bullshit.

I knew I needed to help, but I wasn’t in much state after almost being used as part of a sand factory. Thankfully, after Medli and I flew up to join the pirates, they gave me cover enough to drink the blue potion in one of my Bottles.

“We got this here, Mr. Naskema,” said L’ourse.

“Last time you said that, you definitely didn’t have it.”

“Well this time, I mean it! Besides, the big boss be too busy dealin’ with Mr. Shadow to make more!”

That was a fair point. Leaving Medli with her against the subsiding tide of monsters, I took off to confront the mad Anita. I arrived just in time, as she just summoned herself some Poes with her lantern, which lasted about as long as the rest did against the Phantom Sword.

“You…!” she positively growled. Sounding a war cry, she came at me as her puppet charged an imitation Mist Ball.

Unfortunately for her, this time, we were on the ground, and she was out of surprises. Well, she had one last one – she had the Wind Waker. It was how she had blown Manaphy out to sea to keep him from trying to turn her into a frog. But I caught on quickly enough to take advantage of the times she left herself open trying to compose something and didn’t give her the chance.

With her focus on me, Shadow was free to fight the Puppet Anita. Though even then, he still struggled until Bolt managed to come over to assist us. Turns out electricity-filled Master Swords are as good as Light Arrows as far as weaknesses go.

I’d detail the battle further, but this has already gone on far too long. Suffice to say, the tide rarely turned, and once the puppet’s two forms were destroyed (which I think was actually a downgrade), Shadow and Bolt flanking Anita as I took her head-on was too much for even an aspiring demon queen to handle.

Dawn was breaking as Anita collapsed, her halberd clattering to the ground as the lantern’s flame went out in the sun’s rays. The other fronts had all wrapped up their battles, so there were no threats to blindside the moment. She was holding on with her last threads of consciousness as she looked up at me. I just looked down at Anita. I was mad, but I did my best to make my face show only disappointment.

All I said was, “It’s over.” She said nothing.

Then, in what must have felt like some anticlimatic joke, I pulled Anita’s Master Ball from my bag and bounced it off her back.

She made no effort to get out.

#jumpchain #a man chooses #jumpchain a man chooses #story #layer 4 the legend of zelda the wind waker

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