As the translucent glow receded, Gannondorf owlishly blinked, attempting to take stock of his surroundings. However, someone coughed for his attention and the Prince of Evil purposely turned to get this person in his sights with as much arrogance he could muster.
"Yeah. Umm... H-hello." The Princess Zelda sheepishly greeted, as all her training in formalities had briefly eluded her. There wasn't any procedure concerning talks with the enemy of all of Hyrule (procedure on how to kill him was another matter).
Gannondorf blinked. When the Goddesses were bored enough, he was thrown out of whatever place he was in at the time so that he could rile shit up back in Hyrule. However, it appeared to him that it was the Princess Zelda who unsealed him.
This was new.
And the little green prick wasn't anywhere in sight.
"What's going on?" He stated, a confused frown starting to cross onto his stony features. He hated confusion. Usually, if something had him confuddled, it met with purple fire. Ashes weren't confusing at all.
"We have a problem..." Zelda awkwardly scratched the back of her head.
---
"Let me get this straight." Gannondorf attempted to summarise the information overload he had just sat through. "The little green turd left?"
"Correct." Zelda affirmed. "His name is Link, but correct."
"And then he came back a changed man?"
"Correct."
"You don't like the change?"
"Correct."
"Typical woman." Gannondorf grumbled under his breath.
"What was that!-?" Apparently he didn't grumble it low enough.
"He proceeded to usurp you of Hyrule over a couple of weeks, through negotiation with your subjects until you had been completely cut off?" The gerudo continued.
"Correct."
"So this brings us to now, where you want me to go and kill the Hero of Time so that you can take back your kingdom?"
"Yes." Zelda affirmed before her eyes went wide, "I mean, no! I want you to beat the living stuffing out of him!"
"That's half-arsed! It's all or nothing for me!"
Zelda began to knead at the growing headache she was experiencing.
---
"The Sword of Evil's Bane looks much bigger and far more threatening when you're at the pointed end of it." Remarked Gannondorf, a touch of distaste and begrudging respect tinged his voice. "I mean, my forearm's longer than it."
"Well, go on!" Urged Zelda.
"What?" Gannondorf looked momentarily perplexed at the princess having impatiently crossed her arms. Then it dawned on him. "You want me to pull the Master Sword out of the stone...?"
At Zelda's serious nod, Gannondorf lost it, "ARE YOU CRAZY!-?"
Zelda's stern glare didn't back down. "By the order of the Princess of Hyrule, I order you take the arms provided."
Gannondorf began cracking his knuckles and turned to advance on the monarch.
---
"This is bullshit!" Grumbled the gerudo, the Master Sword slung over his back. "I kidnapped you so many times, yet this one time..."
"Did you really think you could beat me?" Sheik's lower tone replied irritatingly in a matter-of-fact manner. "I'm higher on the tier list than you. Much higher."
"Yeah, but you're the one who wanted this!" The Prince of Evil growled. "Why don't you carry it?"
Sheik took one glance at the Sword of Evil's bane tied to Gannondorf's back, the blade still half-portruding from a portion of rock that the Prince of Evil managed to break off from its altar (-an acceptable compromise, since the Prince of Evil continuously failed in trying to procure it the way it was meant to). Sheik paid careful attention to the way the stone portion was painfully digging into the gerudo's side.
"I said," and Gannondorf spun accusingly, "why don't you--"
"Who me?" Flippantly replied a now Princess Zelda as the aura of the transformation faded. "But I'm a Princess!"
Then she poked him harshly in the chest. "And you're the hero-- anti-her--" Zelda paused, eyebrows twitching as she considered her wording, "hnnnghh-- the lesser evil." Then she immediately brightened as it came to her.
"You're the Lesser King of Evil!"
Gannondorf renewed his pace to the castle with increased vigour.
It was suddenly very personal.
---
The uncomfortable feeling hadn't subsided, even when Gannondorf set the Master Sword down next to him, as both travellers decided to take a break in their trek.
"I think having this sword so close to me is making me impotent."
Zelda snorted in a rather unladylike manner.
---
"I can't let you through without a passport." Stated the gate guard.
Gannondorf's arms ignited with purple fire, but Zelda's own gloved hand stayed the Prince of Evil's threatening gesture and gently led him away.
"Look, as rulers, we don't kill potentially useful subjects." Zelda scolded her travelling companion. "Because if we did this your way, there wouldn't be a kingdom to run."
Gannondorf sighed and relented. He'd miss the brothels. It was a mistake he learned from all those years ago.
"We're doing this my way." Zelda continued, having led them through the market place. "We either get passports and walk in or get some artefacts and sneak in through a vast network of traps and mazes within the castle."
"Which takes less time to get to the formerly-green-clad prick?"
Zelda rolled her eyes. "The artefacts, clearly." She didn't say that she didn't have a passport either. Whatever in Nayru's name that was.
---
Several dungeons later, Gannondorf had a veritable collection of relics that would help him travail Hyrule's apparent dungeon. Now there was only one obstacle left that was halting him and Zelda from reclaiming Hyrule from the current ruler. It happened to be wearing green.
"Do you happen to have a map for Hyrule Castle?" Zelda asked, trying to ignore the flamboyant dancing.
"Tingle has a map for that!" The little imp chortled.
Gannondorf never loathed the colour green as much as he did this very moment.
"Kooloo Limpah!"
Correction: Gannondorf never loathed the colour green as much as he did now than he did a few moments before. In fact, his loathing just kept growing periodically the longer he was in the presence of this... monster.
Zelda thanked Tingle and paid for the map, and once again, the duo began to set off to retake Hyrule.
"But Tingle thinks you should be buying a passport instead!"
It would be later that the Prince of Darkness would decide to destroy the creature when it next crossed his path. Frankly, he was already offended at the thought that it had a chance of incarnating itself into the future... And by Din, if the unthinkable happened, come hell or high water, he'll do his damndest to erase the little bastard from the timeline. Even if he has to use a wish from the Triforce itself!
---
"Yep, this passport checks out." The gate guard nodded in satisfaction before handing the document back to Gannondorf. Both wielders of a third of the Triforce each had a nervous tick in their eyes when they realised they could've easily had the little troll forge documents instead of traipsing all over Hyrule to get equipment to sneak in.
The two then began to step through for the final stretch when--
"Hold it! I'll need to check your passport!"
The pike was barring Zelda from entering.
---
"See? Wasn't that easier?"
"Shut up!"
"Keep this up and you'll earn yourself a healthy purple aura of malignant evil -like mine!"
"I said to shut up!!"
"Who knows? Maybe next time you'll be the bearer of the Triforce of Pow--..."
The Light Arrow was put away when Gannondorf decided not to complete his sentence. Frankly, he didn't want to find out what a deranged Princess could do with a Light Arrow without its bow counterpart.
---
Frantic sky blue irises looked over at all the gathered figures. Creatures of big and small lined the chambers, shuffling here and there all in their appointed tasks. Zelda's eyes went wide. Her war-room had become a den of monsters! A group of moblins were standing around a manuscript. A zora was squinting at a dark nut derisively. A deku scrub was manning an abacus. Everyone was wearing a suit and tie.
"By the Goddesses... My kingdom's become a corporation...?"
"My kingdom you mean." Zelda sent a harsh glare at her travelling companion who had found his voice first.
"Actually," the deku scrub with the abacus looked up, "we're a democracy."
"FUCK!"
That wasn't Gannondorf that time.
---
Link took one look at the Master Sword and promptly tilted his head to the side.
Gannondorf interpreted the silent question. "How can I hold it, right?"
Then the evil king held his hand out to show he hadn't been wearing white gloves, but white gauze wrapped around his fist clenching around the sword handle. A slight sizzling could be heard, and the smell of burning pork was immediately identified. Though that answered a lot of questions, from Link's perspective, it didn't explain why the Master Sword still had a chunk of stone embedded to the bladed portion.
He still hadn't found his answer when the stone-end of the sword smacked him across the face.?
---
"Hahah! Yes! Now I am the King of Hyrule!" Roared Gannondorf in livid triumphant, one foot placed haphazardly on top of the former President's unconscious head. "And the Bigger King of Evil!"
Then all too soon, the high he felt had fallen through, as he glanced down at the piece of stone that was protruding from his chest.
"Well, shit." He summarised his feelings on the matter succinctly. A glance behind him had confirmed that it was the Princess Zelda who drove the Master Sword through his torso. In hindsight, it was probably a stupid idea to throw his only weakness to the floor, instead of say, through the roof and out of the kingdom.
"You think you get used to this after a couple of times." He said it so casually in reference to the sword piercing him, yet blood pooled out of his mouth with every word.
Trying to think of what kind of final impression he was going to leave behind, the dying prince cast a look downwards at the fallen hero, then the sword in his chest, and then back to meet the Princess' eyes.
"Actually, let's not do this again." The truth had spilled out of his tongue, entirely ruining a dramatic exit.
"What? Me calling you to fight Link?" Zelda asked for clarification. As royalty, it had been ingrained into her not to be rude enough to straightforwardly ask her nemesis to just keel over already and simply let him continue with his idle musing.
"Well, yes," The former Gerudo-king amended since the thought was also stupid on so many levels, "but I meant the impale me with stone bit. I had a tower fall on me, but it didn't hurt as much as this."
Then he slumped and died/fell unconscious/whatever it is Gannondorf does until he comes back and gives green-clothed people something to do again.
---
It was all in a day's work, Zelda clapped her hands idly as she reviewed the day's accomplishments. Gannondorf was sealed again, Link was getting thrown out of a moving carriage passing by the Lost Woods, and she was going to have deal with the Fierce Deity's mess tomorrow.
A scowl crossed her features as she glanced at the offending mask that caused her so much trouble. To think, that in just a few days of her disappearance, it had made a mess of everything!
Insurance! Healthcare! Credit! Orphanages! What in the Farore's name had such in innocuous object wrought upon her kingdom?-! Zelda couldn't quite banish the bothersome image of when she'd gone on an inspection of the castle, she'd witnessed a child laughing with a miniblin as they scooted a black and white ball across her garden (it was a mild comfort when the miniblin was promptly destroyed and the child placed in irons for trespassing).
The Princess of Hyrule sighed at the realisation that she was going to have to work really hard over the next couple of years to turn everything back to normal.
