#I factually remembered ‘black spots in your vision means a problem’ but it took a while to connect that to ‘I should fix that’ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dinfeanoriel · 5 years

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A Small (Big) Problem Pt. I

A Linked Universe fanfic. This AU belongs to Linked Universe and Jojo56830.

I own nothing but my own writing.

~~~~~~~

“Hey!”

“Come on!” “Wake up!”

Four groaned at the three familiar voices calling for him to stir. They seeped into his already pounding head, aggravating it and making the headache increasingly worse. His body ached horribly. His very bones throbbed in agony, as if they had been stretched and shrunk, twisted and warped, multiple times.

It was an uncomfortable and painful feeling Four hadn’t felt in a very long time, and one he’d hoped never to experience again.

“Green!”

He felt himself being shaken, the darkness behind closed lids vibrating. It did nothing to quell the growing nausea and pulsing in his head.

“Get up, you lazy arse!” Came an aggravated growl.

Four groaned again, forcing his eyes to open into slits. His mind was slow to awaken. It was muddled and dazed, as though cotton had been stuffed into his head.

Everything was terribly fuzzy.

But as long as he managed to open his eyes and shut the voices up, Four supposed he was willing to deal with the drowsiness and smarting his body.

“I think he’s waking up,” The second voice muttered.

“Really?” Came another, more relieved and excited than the first.

“No, Red,” A third sarcastically put in, “He’s sleeping with his eyes open.”

“Why do you have to be so mean to me, Vio?” Red complained, tears coating his words.

“What?! I wasn’t being mean!” The third sputtered.

“You are pretty mean, Vio.” The voice from before stated, the hint of a smirk present.

“I am not!” Vio defended himself, retorting, “You are the mean one of us!”

“Would you guys give it a rest?” Four griped in a terse mutter, slowly sitting himself up. His head bobbed and Four blinked owlishly.

Woah...Why did he feel so faint and weak?

“Woah, easy there, Green!” Red chided, and Four felt an arm hook around his shoulders to help him the rest of the way. He was grateful for it. His attempt had been quite pathetic.The world was spinning in so many different directions, the small Hero couldn’t tell whether he was upside down or right side up.

Possibly neither?

But that didn’t make sense either...

“Gah...My head hurts...” Four groused, a displeased frown lining his lips. He cradled his head in his hand, willing the pounding to go away, “And you guys arguing isn’t helping me any.”

There was a moment of silence.

An awkward silence. Four could just imagine that if Red, Blue, and Vio were physically there, they would be sharing that look with each other.

“Um, Green,” Red slowly started, laughing a bit nervously. Four could see him in his mind’s eye, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Hate to break it to you,” Came Blue’s voice, “But...”

“We aren’t inside your head.” Vio finished.

Hold on a moment...

They were right.

Their voices weren’t coming from inside of his head, but outside!

Four whipped his head up in disbelief. This, he soon discovered, was an incredibly bad and most idiotic move on his part.

“Blue, catch him!” Red ordered in concern as Four listed backwards. Hands grabbed him again, holding him in place and never letting go.

Four waited for the world to stop tipping and turning before focusing his gaze above him. Three identical, blurry, faces slowly came into focus, and Four was shocked to find they belonged to a frowning Blue, worried Red, and calm Vio.

“How are you three-” He looked sharply to the Four Sword, still sheathed at his side. Confusion furrowed his brow and he looked to find the other three Heroes shrugging, mirroring his bewilderment.

“We’re as lost as you are,” Blue’s voice sounded behind him. His hand moved to grip Four’s right forearm, and the small Hero realized he was leaning back against him, “When you fell unconscious, the four of us separated.”

“I don’t like it,” Red piped up, still hovering worriedly over Four, “You didn’t draw the Four Sword or call on its power, so why did we split?”

Everyone turned to Vio.

Vio blinked and raised his hands in the air, “Why do you look to me?”

“Because you know everything!” Red chirped, staring at him expectantly. Vio was, after all, a fountain of knowledge the other three had constantly turned to in the past. He’d definitely gotten them out of a few tight spots before.

“I do not know everything,” Vio corrected Red, “I know some things.”

“You know more than all of us combined.” Blue pointed out, and Red shot him a look of surprise.

“That was surprisingly kind of you to say, Blue,” He remarked with approval, ocean eyes sparkling.

“Probably as close to a compliment either of us are ever going to get,” Four couldn’t help but add, and Vio nodded in agreement. Blue huffed and turned his face away, crossing his arms with an attitude befitting of the temperamental Hero,

“Whatever!”

“Now,” Vio cut in before anyone else could speak, “On to more important matters, we need to figure out what’s happened to us.” He casually folded his arms, falling into his “thinking stance,” as Red dubbed it. He even raised a hand to his chin when doing so.

Red had taken to mimicking him at times.

“All I remember was a flash of light and then pain.” Red replied, slipping next to Blue. He placed a hand on Four’s shoulder and back, poking and prodding their friend as he searched of something.

He worried his lower lip, intense concentration twisting his usually light and carefree expression.

Four tried to glance back at him, but his eyes still hurt from the little light seeping through the canopy of the trees looming above them.

Concussion?

Maybe.

“What are you doing, Red?” Blue asked as he and Vio watched their counterpart crouch down and take a closer look at something.

“Ha!” Red suddenly cheered, and Four flinched when he felt a sharp prick in his back. “Look at this!”

Blue and Vio immediately crowded around Four.

“Can you not swamp me?” Four grumbled, shifting so he could stand also. Vio gave him a hand, which he gladly took. Instead of allowing Four to stand on his own, however, Vio tugged him close and had him lean against him.

Four supposed it made sense. The ground would often swap places with the sky. Or was it the other way around? He couldn’t tell.

That was a bad sign...wasn’t it?

Blue and Vio peered closer at the object Red held carefully in his hands whilst Four tried his best to focus his whirling vision. Vertigo was such a terrible thing.

From what he could see, it was a thin crystal dart, with ominous, glowing markings coiling around it. Tendrils of mist enshrouded it, finger-like slivers lashing out menacingly.

“That’s what hit us?” Blue questioned, quirking an eyebrow. He looked vaguely unimpressed.

Vio frowned, “I don’t recognize it or the markings.”

That wasn’t exactly what the others wanted to hear. For Vio not to know something spelled trouble for them.

“Great...So, because that-” Four gestured to the dart, “- hit me, we were split apart. Have we tried merging?”

He received three negative responses.

“Let’s give that a shot then. I’d rather not explain why there are four of us.” Four said, and the others agreed. Red, Blue, Green, and Vio unsheathed their blades and lifted them high in the air, crying out in unison.

Nothing.

Red lowered his Four Sword, the others following his lead. They stared at the blade, confounded.

“It...didn’t work?”

“Was that a question or a statement?” Came Vio’s deadpan inquiry. Blue shot him a nasty look but refrained from snapping back.

“Again,” Red firmly said, and they lifted the Four Sword into the air once more.

No light. No dull thrum. No nothing.

“Why isn’t it working?” Four wondered aloud, glancing towards Vio in the hopes that the purple-clad Hero might have an answer.

Vio could only shrug, just as bemused. “I have no idea, but I have an inkling that it has something to do with that dart. If I took a closer look at it, I might be able to find something.”

Red happily handed it to him, shuddering once he’d gotten rid of it. The black, crystal, dart had given him the chills and he didn’t want to hold onto it longer than he had to.

Vio quickly slipped it into his pouch. Clearly, he wanted little to do with it too. Risking exposure to it was not exactly at the top of his list at the moment.

“There’s another thing,” Blue spoke up again, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. Four glanced in the general direction of his voice, squinting when all he saw was a blue blob standing across from him, flanked by a red one.

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Well...have you taken a good look around us?” Blue asked him, motioning with his hands to the surrounding forest.

“Oh yeah,” Red murmured, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, “I’d forgotten about that.”

“About what?” Four inquired, glancing away from Red, Vio, and Blue to see what was amiss. It took him a bit since his vision was still horrifically blurred, but one he managed to focus, the Hero had to take a double take. “What is this?!” He exclaimed, startling his companions.

“Did we shrink or did everything get bigger?” Four asked, staring in disbelief at the gigantic plants and ginormous trees that practically dwarfed them. The sheer size of everything was rather intimidating to him now. Even the blades of grass were taller than they were! The pleasant flowers drooped ominously above them, droplets of dew slipping from the petals and soaking in the dirt.

One plopped onto Red, and the poor Hero’s head and shoulders were drenched. He blinked his eyes clear of the water, brushing the bangs now clinging to his forehead aside.

“Isn’t that the same thing?” Red whispered to Blue as he took off his hat and wrung it. Vio face-palmed.

“We shrunk.” Blue answered bluntly.

“We’re currently Minish-sized.” Vio helpfully supplied in a factual manner. Four could not believe it.

“How could this have happened?”

“We don’t know,” Red replaced his hat on his head then fiddled with his hands, “When we split, we were too preoccupied with ensuring you were okay before realizing we’d separated and shrunk.”

Four’s expression went flat.

“Wonderful...” He muttered under his breath, crossing his arms with a displeased frown, “If I don’t get back to camp soon, they’ll all come looking for me.”

Who knew how long he’d been out? How long would it be until someone came searching for him?

“Oh no!”

Four’s head snapped up again at the abrupt exclamation and he staggered backwards when the world suddenly went berserk. His balance no longer appeared to exist as his knees gaze out beneath him. Vio caught hold of his tunic and dragged him forward, keeping a strong grasp on him to prevent him from falling again.

“Quit that!” He hissed to Four when Red slapped his hands to his cheeks. Blue immediately went for his blade,

“What? What is it?” He demanded, turning his head every-which-way in search for whatever danger he thought Red had seen.

Goddess knows mice were quite the pests when they were this tiny.

Red waved his hands frantically in the air, an apologetic look on his face, “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you! It’s just, I realized, they’re going to send Twilight to find us. He is a wolf after all.”

“He’s right.” Vio calmly agreed, inclining his head. Four cringed.

“Fabulous,” Blue muttered with a roll of his eyes. They couldn’t agree more.

“So...” Red started to say, elongating the vowel as his gaze darted between Green, Vio, and Blue, “What do we do?”

“Is there really anything we can do?” Four asked in return, dragging a hand down his weary face.

“Hope that no one finds us?” Blue sarcastically suggested.

“Improbable.” Vio asserted.

“Nobody asked you!”

“Nobody asked anyone.”

Four withheld the urge to sigh. His head still protested against the noise, the blacksmith occupying it making himself known more and more.

“Please stop,” Four pleaded. He rubbed at his temples, pained, “I can’t deal with this right now.”

Surprisingly, Blue and Vio instantly quieted and Red gripped his arm in concern.

“Your head still hurts?”

Four grunted in acknowledgement, eyes squeezed shut, “Terribly. And my whole body aches.”

Blue, Red, and Vio shared another look.

“You don’t think it was poisoned, do you?” Blue slowly asked. Red’s eyes grew wide in horror. He rounded on Vio,

“Please say it wasn’t!”

Vio’s frown steepened as he peeked into his pouch, eyeing the dart with analytical eyes.

How was he to know? He didn’t recognize the magic or the markings. He had no clue what it had inflicted on Four. This mysterious ailment was unfamiliar to him and Vio hated it.

He hated not knowing things because it always led to trouble like this. Yes, he was knowledgeable and well-read, but Vio still had a great deal to learn.

“I don’t know.” He sighed, snapping his pack shut in frustration, “I can’t tell. It could be a side-effect of whatever magic is bound to it.” He didn’t dare touch it to find out. He tightened his grip on Four when the Hero slumped further against him.

Vio grew more troubled. Green wasn’t looking at all good. He was sweating and growing weaker by the second.

He wracked his brain for any helpful information, only to come up empty-handed. He knew practically nothing of what could possibly be ailing him.

“It’s not Shadow Magic, that’s for sure,” Red murmured, watching Four closely. Green was starting to resemble a ghost with how pale he was getting and a glazed look was beginning to enter his eyes. “Why don’t you sit down, Green?” He suggested, gently tugging Four from Vio’s grasp and making sure Four did as he said. “You don’t look too great.”

Four was all too happy to oblige. He seated himself on a large twig, folding his arms on his knees and leaning forward until his head was pillowed on them.

His mind was beginning to spin, his head suddenly light, and body ready to faint. There was a distant ringing in his ears that told Four that if he made any sudden move, he might just black out.

He groaned in distress.

He waited for the dizziness to settle before risking sitting up, only to cover his face with his hands when the light mercilessly stabbed at his eyes and made the sensations increasingly worse.

He felt downright awful!

His hands were immediately pulled away from his face, and Blue pressed the back of his hand to Green’s forehead.

“He is a little warm, but not too warm.”

Four weakly battered him away.

“I’m fine,” He stubbornly claimed. It was useless to try and convince them, he knew. They knew better than to believe him.

“He used the ‘f’ word,” Red accused, jabbing a finger towards Four. Blue shook his head at him, disappointed.

“You should know better, Green.”

Four almost groaned again. He had used the forbidden word and would now reap the consequences of doing so. Why, oh, why had he done that? It had slipped out almost instinctively from him! He hadn’t even thought of the words before they were uttered aloud!

Vio rolled his eyes at Red and Blue, veiling his own concern for their ailing friend, “He’s ill. Give him a break.”

“Thank you.”

Vio accepted his gratitude with a curt nod.

“Anyway, we need to find our way back to camp.” The purple-clad Hero added, crossing his arms once more. “Anyone remember where it is?”

Red and Blue pointed in different directions,

“North.” “West.”

They looked at each other incredulously while Vio dropped his head into his hand.

Hopeless! They were completely hopeless!

“West?!”

“It wasn’t North!”

Blue planted his fists on his hips, leaning towards Red with a scowl, “How would you know?!” Red puffed up his cheeks, shooting back just as fiercely, “Well, how would you know?!”

Four curled into himself, cradling his head. He felt horribly wretched!

Red immediately stopped arguing with Blue and hurried to his side. Gently placing a hand onto Four’s shoulder, he softly asked,

“Green, you okay?”

“He’s anything but okay.” Blue answered for Four, worry creasing his brow. “We need to get moving.” He approached the ill Hero and helped him stand. Four sagged heavily against him.

He was suddenly bone-tired and exhausted. All he wanted to do was rest, but Four knew better than to give in to the urge of closing his eyes. He might never open them again.

They had no idea what he’d been hit by, or what magic was bound to the dart. If there was a chance that it was poisoned, he couldn’t risk sleeping.

“Here, Green,” A red blob suddenly appeared in front of Four’s face. The Hero blinked owlishly, striving to clear his hazy vision. “It’s a Red Potion.” Red identified. Vio took it from Red’s hold and uncorked it, proffering the bottle to Four.

Four reached for it, only for his hand to miss by several inches. Red, Blue, and Vio’s concern skyrocketed.

He tried again, confused as to how he could miss it when it was only a few inches away.

He grasped nothing but air.

Red took the potion back from Vio and Blue gripped Four’s hands, guiding them to the bottle. Once he grasped it, Four closed his hands around it and with Vio’s guidance, brought it to his lips for a sip.

Immediately, his face drained of color and Four shoved it back into Vio’s hands, scrambling to the side. He collapsed against the twig, leaning over it as he expelled the contents of his stomach. Red rushed forward, quickly collecting Four’s hair and holding it out of his face as he gasped and heaved and wretched.

He ended up having to keep Four from falling face-forward onto the ground. The green-clad Hero didn’t appear to be capable of holding himself up on his own.

Fear crept into Red’s heart. Blue and Vio were also beginning to grow afraid. Four was losing his strength at an alarming rate. His eyes fluttered as he fought to keep them open and his head bobbed weakly.

“His stomach rejected the Red Potion?” Four faintly heard Blue shrilly say, unbridled worry seeping into his tone.

“He needs to drink it again.”

Was it Four’s imagination, or did Vio’s voice waver in uncertainty and concern?

Red nervously looked up, “Can he handle it, Vio?”

Vio swallowed back his own concerns, fighting to remain calm and level-headed. He knew Red and Blue needed for him to be strong and stable when they couldn’t be.

“He’ll have to. He didn’t have time to digest it.”

Red was hesitant to, but the health of his friends was more important to him than his own worries. He brushed his anxiousness aside for now and helped Four take another sip when he’d recovered.

“Sorry, Green,” Red whispered, patting his friend’s back and rubbing soothing circles when Four gagged again. Words tumbled from Red in a panicked jumble, “You can’t throw it up! You gotta swallow it, Green! No no no! Keep it in!”

Easier said than done!

Four tried.

He really did.

It was a valiant effort, but his stomach churned and coiled, and Four knew it was a losing battle. The nauseousness overwhelmed him.

The Red potion spewed back out.

A grimace crossed his pained features. Red tugged his hair back and Four felt a new pair of hands settle on his shoulders.

“Again,”

He would have cursed Vio then had he not known they were doing it for his own good.

Blue moved around them to crouch down in front of Four. In his hands was the remainder of the Red Potion. There was so little left...

Blue looked sternly to Four, though none of them missed the worry shimmering in those eyes,

“Now, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ruin my tunic, alright, Green? Because I swear, if you do, this poison will be the least of your worries.”

Four managed to muster a weak grin. He curled an arm around his protesting stomach.

“I’ll apologize...beforehand...” He weakly rasped as the urge to gag grew stronger.

“Don’t you even think about it, Green,” Blue warned, pressing the rim of the bottle to his lips. Four forced himself to swallow.

He half-expected his stomach to rebel again, but it didn’t. It took a few minutes, but to his relief, the potion soon began to work its magic. His headache subsided and the aching lessened to a more tolerable level. He relaxed and dropped his head, grateful that Red had kept a potion handy.

“How’re you feeling?” Blue asked, leaning into Four’s line of vision. The Hero wearily nodded.

“Better.” He breathed out.

Red gave an audible sigh of relief, shoulders slumping. “Oh, good! We need to start moving. You gonna be okay?” He asked, curling Four’s arm around his shoulders and wrapping his own around the green-clad Hero’s waist.

Four nodded, and with Red and Vio’s help, stood up. He was wobbly at best, but Four forced himself to remain upright.

“By the way,” He started to add, looking between Red and Blue with a smirk, “The camp’s to the east.”

#Linked Universe #linkeduniverse #Legend of Zelda #Fanfic #Beware #Minish-sized Links

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