of rabbit flowers & angry moons: chapter nine
the chapter in which we begin again

I'm a piece of shit liar, but I never forgot about this tale or the direction it was going to take. This is where we start a certain cross-over... 3

Reality was like a dizzying throw back and forth - it was, it wasn't, and then it was. When Sheik awoke from his nap in the Romani Ranch barn, he felt as if at once everything had changed. And, judging from his now-metallic quarters with a view of blank nothingness save for spots of light and passed out cow, it had.

Last he had recalled, Pit, Snake, and he had been given the (Pit-proclaimed) "golden" treatment (though by Sheik's terms it was more like a bronze tarnish, or just plain rust - they were given the rust treatment) by the "charming" woman named Cremia and, reluctantly, her "precocious" younger sister Romani. She was a spectacular sort of woman dedicated to her passion of infusing cow milk with magical properties, which Pit had found to be especially valuable at...well, face value. Snake, on the other hunt, had begun a hunt into the natural resources of the area, eager to uncover something harrowing. No one had magical milk, let alone gave it out for a bargain price. Sheik just thought she was a drug dealer and left it at that while he slept off his broken nose among the cows.

But, the thing was, no one expected the aliens to arrive that evening.

Seriously, if aliens were to abduct someone, Sheik would have pegged Pit for a prime candidate. Firstly, he had wings, which was something a large amount of humans, Hylians, and otherwise lacked. That in itself would have been the primary reason to abduct Pit, but secondly...well, he just looked like the kind of guy whom aliens would have abducted and be forced to debate upon whether the prodding instrument was hot or cold. (Kind of weird, but Pit wouldn't have put too much stock into it had he known what was going on in the faux-ninja's brain.)

Sheik knew something was up when that little wench Romani interrupted his nap with the cows and had starting whispering insane about how they were all going up together. But what he didn't know was that how when he woke up, little of his former life remained. It wasn't a dystopian fantasy where the world was destroyed and he and the cow were the sole survivors (how depressing - the cow wasn't even awake yet to understand what a pickly pickle the two of them were in!), but rather one that was remarkably different.

Perhaps it was a world where, he dreamed, no one knew who he was...or could be in the blink of an eye.

He was as genuine in this emotion as there were many fighters out there who were just fighting for past glory. Take Mr. Game and Watch who, for the most part, never let one forget how original he was with his "old school" demeanor. That was how Sheik took it, at least. Every fight against him had been the standard BEEP BOOP fare, which bored Sheik like none other because it wasn't as if Game and Watch's inclusion in the tournament gave him renewed relevancy. If anything, it served to remind the others of just what a relic he was and how far the rest of them had come. Of course, this notion of the digital man as the supposed grandfather of them all made Sheik want to barf into his cowl and switch to Zelda to clean up the mess. That, at least, was more entertaining, even just experienced through the story of others.

Aboard this metallic spaceship (there were aliens, so duh it was their spaceship, he thought), Sheik wondered if Zelda existed.

For all he knew, he could have been taken to another dimension where Zelda never existed and he was all alone. Did the aliens know who he was? Knee-jerk thought was of course they did, but then in his growing excitement he interrupted that thought with, but what if they didn't? If they didn't know who he was, then Sheik could invent a whole new persona for himself and get away with it. He could be Lucario for goddess's sake and pretend to wave around weird energy mists (not that it would be particularly prudent to do so around unfamiliar aliens, but prudent was never among the adjectives used to describe Sheik). He could be Kirby and eat everyone! Or Ike and fight for his friends! Hell, he could be his own person in his own body!

In all reality, Sheik knew that Zelda probably existed even in another dimension because the universe wasn't completely kind to Sheik - in fact, it was kind of a jerk. This was probably an alternate dimension where he had to make creepy salutes while passing larger-than-life portraits of her, see her stupid face on all the currency, witness everyone name their firstborn after her...that kind of thing. In boredom, he tried out different salutes to Zelda he would no doubt be forced to give, but he slyly slipped the bird in each one out of defiance.

...Except while doing so, he accidentally poked the sleeping cow in the eye, which made it a sleeping cow no longer. In fact, it was rather an angry cow. Not even a cow, actually.

Okay, it was a bull. Sheik had just pissed off a bull in what felt like a tin can, and he was going to die without ever having given icons of Zelda the middle finger, which was really the biggest tragedy of them all.

The bull was getting ready to charge as Sheik entered another one of his useless ninja poses when they were both interrupted by a strange voice.

"Heeey, you're finally awake!"

It wasn't that there was another apparently sentient alien life-form among them saying very ordinary and reasonable things that disarmed Sheik and the bull but the manner of speaking that was so remarkable. The texture, tone, and enunciation of each word sounded so dizzying closed off into itself that it seemed almost a caricature of a voice (those were the bull's observations, at least). It was abrupt, grating, and strange.

Sheik was poised to respond with an elegant What the hell? when the voice did a thing. It was a wheezy thing, like it was supposed to be a laugh but ended up sounding like one of annoying party toys that Ness, Lucas, and Tooney would harass everyone else with when Peach decided to throw kid (and Pikmin) birthday parties even when it wasn't anyone's birthday.

(It was a laugh, Sheik, just get over it.)

"Boy, oh boy," it said, "Captain's really gonna be happy to talk to you two."

After that, it grabbed its belly for another laugh, but that part was really lost to Sheik and the bull since they were just coming to terms that this was a voice saying words that they should probably listen to. However, it continued without Sheik or the bull's understanding:

"Just follow me!"

Those were words suggesting that a physical action was to follow - like, you know, following the strangely strange stranger - but instead Sheik and the bull simply exchanged glances. The gesture was automatic, which made Sheik suddenly grow paranoid that the bull could, and was, reading his thoughts. Immediately he began to think in code and tried to conjure up images of a butcher in the Hyrule Market as a show of dominance and strength, but the bull was very nonplussed about the whole situation which made Sheik feel rather small. In fact, the bull was looking downright peaceful, which was unnerving, but in reality the bull was simply a bull thinking bull thoughts about how the cool metal floor felt beneath its hooves, how Sheik's hair was the same color of delicious hay that it longed to eat, why the huge duck talking to them had on no pants, and whether or not this spaceship was speeding along to an active destination or was simply in a temporary, passive trajectory.

...How small Sheik felt indeed, even without the bovine gift of telepathy. Truly the bull was a strong opponent, but showing that he was stronger would have to come later, Sheik realized, as right then the Romani Ranch bull was the only friend he had in this strange world.

"Hey! Are you two deaf?" the strange duck-thing shrieked suddenly, bringing Sheik and the bull's attention back towards him. "I said c'mon!"

The bull rose to its hooves and began to move in the voice's desired direction, which in turn spurred the maybe-a-ninja-here into motion. That is to say, they began following the strange creature into the great unknown...