The Legend of Zelda: The Mystical Object of Fate
(The Most Generic Zelda Fic Ever)
by Galaxy Girl
A/N: This fic is not meant to make fun of any "generic" Zelda fanfiction specifically… it's to make fun of ALL of them, COLLECTIVELY! I love flames, actually, so send a few my way if you really do feel insulted and like I should be strung up in town square for all to see!
Oh yeah, um… this takes place circa OoT-era Hyrule, with OoT Link at about age 20.
CHAPTER ONE: The Return of Ganondorf!
It all began, as these things often do, with the return of Ganondorf.
Never mind the fact that Ganondorf, the Gerudo King of Thieves/Evil King of all Badassness was in possession of the Triforce of Power and probably could have escaped the entire time if he so desired. On the other hand, he had been locked away with all the powers of the Six… sorry, Seven Sages and their Badly Thought Out Plan. Throw in a little Master Sword sealant there and it seemed there would be NO way for the Mean Green King Machine to get out of the big white dump in between dimensions.
But he did, and that's all there is to it.
There are many theories as to how Ganondorf managed to escape from the Sacred Realm that day, most of which involved some sort of festering hatred coupled with the obvious power of the Triforce of Power. A few placed the blame on some kind of summoning ceremony performed by the few Gerudo who still remained loyal to him, or perhaps by a daughter he never knew he had. One popular rumor had Ganondorf constructing some kind of elaborate escape mechanism out of a few spare bobby pins, a paper clip, three rubber bands and six inches of twine.
In any case, Ganondorf was out. After crash landing face-first into a large thicket of prickle bushes, he was on his way to Gerudo Valley atop his mighty black stallion that someone had been kind enough to tether to a post outside the Temple of Time and keep fed and watered for the ten years since his owner had been locked away.
"My vengeance will finally be complete!" he laughed maniacally to himself, taking in the cool night air as his shadow flickered against the rocks in the moonlight. "After all this time of waiting and plotting, I will finally be able to destroy Link, Zelda and the Sages and take over the world again! Whereupon I will be able to regain the Triforce and become MASTER OF THE WORLD!"
The stallion neighed in agreement with the sudden thunderclap and lightning flash in an otherwise clear sky.
Ganondorf sneered wickedly. His long, flowing hippie hair and cape waved in the breeze behind him. The sun was rising over Gerudo Valley before him, and he knew waiting there in the fortress was his army, a vast army of scantily clad wild women who revered him as a god and would do anything to serve him or please him. An army that soon would be mobilized and attacking the capitol city of Hyrule. An army that would soon bring that horrifically cocky Princess Zelda to her knees to beg for mercy from him and his demon hoards. An army that would shish-kebab that brat Hero of Time on many, many sharp objects and stick him to Ganondorf's wall like a grotesque pin cushion, thereby creating an effective display of Ganondorf's power as well as a nice conversation piece when guests come over for dinner.
Oh yeah. It was gonna be great. All he needed to do was get there…
Which he soon did. And the King of All Darkness found himself in the presence of the Gerudo's new leader, the exalted Lady Nabooru.
"In the presence of" meaning handcuffed and dragged bleeding into her office, thrown out on the floor in front of her and given the third degree.
"What in Din's name are YOU doing back in Hyrule!" Nabooru was understandably unhappy to see him as she paced back and forth in front of her desk, arms crossed and looking plainly unamused. "That seal was supposed to last a couple of CENTURIES! Not a few years shy of a single DECADE! How in the hell did you escape, Ganondorf?"
"Rumor has it I found six inches of twine," Ganondorf began to explain, before one of the two guards standing beside him kicked him in the shoulder impatiently.
"I ought to turn you over to Princess Zelda immediately!" Nabooru eyed him with disgust, tapping her fingers on her desk. "Knowing her, she'd save us all the trouble of having to deal with you again and execute you straight out." Her fingers crossed her neck in the universal symbol for decapitation.
"Nabooru, please. Is that any kind of respect to show to the man who was supposed to be your king? Your god?" Ganondorf batted his big, glamorous golden eyes at her with all the charm of a mongoose.
Nabooru chose only to reply by raising an eyebrow high up on her forehead and cocking her head curiously.
"You're not supposed to make it this difficult! When your fallen king escapes from his Eternal Prison, you're supposed to welcome him back with open arms and a mindlessly obedient attitude! How else am I to put into motion my Plan of Festering Revenge?" Ganondorf was very displeased at how this fanfiction was going so far. Usually, he'd have already been re-crowned, re-worshipped and re-obeyed.
"Welcome to Reality Land, Ganondork," Nabooru snapped "cleverly", placing her hands on her hips and striding out in front of her desk. "Do you honestly think that ANY of us Gerudo still revere you as our king? Are you naïve enough to think that ANY of us would EVER do what you say again?"
"Um… yes?" he guessed meekly.
She strode out in front of the desk and faced him for a good ten seconds before kicking him square in the groin.
"How freakin' stupid do you think I am! You turned me into an Iron Knuckle. You brainwashed the entire Gerudo tribe. You took over the world and killed several thousand people. Did you ever, for a moment, honestly think that you could waltz into Gerudo Valley and start tossing around orders again without any of us having even the slightest qualms about it? We've spent the last ten years trying to clean up the mess you made with the rest of Hyrule! And you thought we'd throw that all completely away?" Nabooru's tirade ended with the punctuation of her fist smacking into her open palm.
"But it always happens like that!" Ganondorf protested as the two guards holding him loosened their grip on his arms. "Objectionable out-of-characterness aside, you're supposed to gracefully welcome me back into the tribe with only a vague promise that I won't do anything megalomaniacal or evil in nature! Then I pull the wool over your eyes, have you locked away in a dungeon for the rest of your miserable life, and mobilize my Gerudo army to annihilate the rest of Hyrule!"
"I don't know what kind of stuff you've been reading, pal, but there is NO WAY you're going to find ANYBODY here who will even briefly THINK about helping you out," Nabooru huffed with a snarky grin.
The guard to Ganondorf's left raised her hand meekly. "I want to risk your horrible wrath and pledge my allegiance to Lord Ganondorf again!" she spoke up.
"Me too," the guard on his right agreed, dropping his arm and gripping her spear tightly.
Nabooru eyed the two guards in disbelief for several awkward seconds. "You've got to be kidding me. You guys would rather support Ganondorf, The Evil King, than me, Nabooru, the woman who's led you and kept you safe and clothed and fed you and talked you out of a few public executions for all these years? Nabooru, the SAGE OF FREAKIN' SPIRIT?"
"Looks like it," Ganondorf shrugged, standing up and dusting himself off.
"Drat," Nabooru cursed as she was quickly subdued, chained and locked in the Gerudo training ground without much of a fight, despite her nature as perhaps the best Gerudo thief of all time.
Ganondorf's beady yellow eyes were smiling as they eyed his vast army of suddenly obedient scantily-clad wild women. They stood at attention before him, though several were obviously trying not to stare at the Impenetrable Fortress of Darkness he'd whipped up with the Triforce of Power and the remains of the Gerudo Fortress. The Impenetrable Fortress of Darkness was several hundred stories tall, black, spiky and generally architecturally impossible.
"Ladies of Gerudo Nation," he boomed in his best Commanding Voice. "Your lord, the Evil King Ganondorf Dragmire has returned from his brief imprisonment in the Sacred Realm! Now is the time when the Gerudo Nation will once again become strong, dominate the kingdom and exert HORRIBLE revenge on the peoples of Hyrule who DARED to defy me before!"
"YES, SIR!" they screamed in unison.
"The traitor Nabooru is now locked away in the depths of my Evil Dungeon, never to be seen or heard from again! Soon, the rest of the Six Sages, Princess Zelda and that loathsome little Hero of Time will also fall to her fate and there will be no one to stand up to me!"
"YES… SIR!" the reply was less enthusiastic. A few of the younger lieutenants blushed. That loathsome little Hero of Time was actually kind of cute.
"I shall require a tactical meeting with the highest ranks of you in a few minutes to share my evil plot and to catch up with what's been going on while I've been imprisoned!" Ganondorf continued, counting off the plans for the day on his fingers. "Then, I shall require a strict and thorough loyalty cleansing! Nothing personal, but I don't want my Vast and Obedient Army to be thinned out with a bunch of cowards and wishy-washy Hero of Time fangirls!"
Most of the Gerudo blushed. If Ganondorf thinned his army of every single one of the Link fangirls, he'd end up with an army of approximately four: Lady Nabooru (who found Link pretty cute, but honestly "just a friend"), and a trio of traditionalist Gerudo women whose average age figured out to about sixty eight. Ganondorf could hear their raspy hoots, catcalls and wet coughs from the back row of his Vast and Obedient Army at this very moment.
"Now, we really sort of screwed up last time, what with my complete disregard for the Hero of Time up until the moment he snuck up behind me in the very heart of my inner sanctum… and my unwillingness to just blow up the places and people who refused to bow down to me rather than set them up a long, drawn-out and easily preventable death… and my unfortunate habit of imprisoning the Sages in the temples that they would later be awakened into… and my idiotic insistence that all of my demonic hoards come with a clearly marked and fairly obvious weak spot… But I've learned from my mistakes and this time, there is no WAY we will fail!" Ganondorf shouted spiritedly.
The Gerudo, now stripped of all their personalities and personal qualms with the plan let out a wild cheer for their recently re-elected King of Evil. Ganondorf gloated in the roar and laughed maniacally, stirring up another one of those freak thunderstorms.
Yes… this time, his plan was foolproof. FOOLPROOF! There was nothing anybody could do to distract him from his wicked intentions… NOTHING…
Except… one thing.
"I WHAT!" Ganondorf roared in shock a few minutes later, deep within the heart of his Inner Inner Inner Sanctum. He pounded his fist on his desk (it was actually Nabooru's desk… Ganondorf had been admiring the charming wood finish on it the entire time she was interrogating him and didn't have the heart to destroy it) and glared at the Gerudo standing before him.
One of them was the green-clad Aveil, his new most trusted advisor and first mate. She clenched her teeth in a grim little smile and tried her best to calm him down. "It's true, my lord. I'm sorry to have to break it to you so quickly… but we thought it would be best for both of you if we just…"
"YOU WHAT?" he seethed, tightening his fist around a glass paperweight until it shattered.
The second Gerudo was a very pissed-off-looking third lieutenant. She wore lavender clothing and had her arms crossed in the universal "you better look at me and acknowledge my presence and listen to EVERYTHING I have to say, mister, or I've got a Swiss Army Knife set to 'castrate' with your name on it" position. "It wasn't MY fault, Boobear! What am I supposed to do, you suddenly disappear for ten years without so much as a phone call… you never called, you filthy bastard!"
"SHE WHAT?" Ganondorf slammed his forehead into the desk melodramatically, staring in horror at the third Gerudo.
This one was a child, around the age of ten. Her clothes were all black and looked like she had taken to ripping them up around the knees with a pair of scissors. She wore dark makeup and had black streaks in her otherwise blood red hair. Her face was permanently glued in the look that a lot of ten-year-olds wore, a look that said "I'm not actually a teenager yet, but I'm doing my darnedest to get the look and the pissy attitude down before I actually reach my teenage years and realize that only idiots actually prepare themselves to be teenagers", or "I just got back from the mall with my friends and we totally bought sports bras and we're wearing them, even though none of us have any reason to wear a bra at all, but wearing them makes us feel SO COOL we have to get snappy and cop an attitude about basically everything". There was also a hint of "I act all tough and brooding in public because I desperately want to be a goth and appear older than I am, but on a good day you can still catch me in my room brushing my doll's hair and talking to my imaginary friend about how cute that boy at school is".
"It's true, my lord. This girl… is your daughter," Aveil was still smiling grimly.
"Your daughter that you've NEVER EVEN CARED TO SEND A BIRTHDAY CARD TO!" the second Gerudo, whose name was Leela due to the fact that the author was really bad at making up names that sound like they could actually belong in the video game.
The girl eyed her alleged father with disdain, hands shoved moodily in her pockets and iPod blasting the new Evanescence CD in one ear while she listened vaguely with the other.
"It's not possible! How in DIN'S NAME could I have a daughter? I WOULD HAVE KNOWN IF I HAD A DAUGHTER! Is this some kind of ploy to get me to pay you alimony?" Ganondorf accused Leela with an Accusatory Finger.
Leela smacked him across the face a moment later. "MAYBE YOU DON'T REMEMBER, YOU WRETCHED, DISGUSTING PIG-LIKE MONSTER! Ten years ago! You took me to prom, Boobear!"
Ganondorf turned deeply red and clearly did remember. "I most certainly did not! I would remember being called 'Boobear'!"
"YOU DID! You did! My friends dared me to ask you to prom! I caught you after school one day as you were on your way home from negotiating with the King of Hyrule and I asked you to prom and you said yes!" Leela went on viciously. "We went to prom and we had a WONDERFUL time and afterwards-"
"I don't know WHAT you're talking about!" Ganondorf maintained. "I don't even remember you!" In truth, he vaguely remembered a young Gerudo girl named Leela, but that Leela had been a pimply, greasy sprig of a girl with Coke-bottle glasses and an affinity for stamp collecting. Not this gorgeous, voluptuous bombshell of a babe! WOO!
Leela leaned against his desk and glared at him furiously. "And a few months later, I find out that I'm pregnant and I go looking for you... AND YOU SKIPPED TOWN, YOU DEADBEAT! You ABANDONED ME, in the time I needed you most! Not so much as a phone call! A letter! A drunken tirade outside my bedroom window! NOTHING!"
"I took over the world and became the Evil King of all Hyrule with the Triforce of Power before I was sealed away in the Sacred Realm by the Seven Sages and the Hero of Time, Lily…"
"IT'S LEELA!"
"Leela, Leela, SORRY!" Ganondorf corrected himself quickly. "I couldn't have written you a letter if I wanted to!"
"Don't apologize to me! Apologize to my little girl, who's never known her father! She used to toddle up to me and ask, 'Mommy, do I have a daddy? Does he love me?' And I could never give her a straight answer, Boobear!" Leela huffed, glancing sadly at the preteen Gerudo nearby.
Ganondorf took in a deep sigh and bit his lip. The resemblance was pretty clear. That and he was kind of the only male Gerudo this century. It really couldn't have been a case of mistaken identity. He also vaguely did remember wining, dining and having a tryst with little "Leela the Leech" a few months before he began his Evil Kingdom and the starting point for when he was locked away in the Sacred Realm.
Well… he may as well make the best of things.
"All right, all right, she's mine…" Ganondorf admitted finally. "Sorry… I'll… um… what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to be a father to her," Leela crossed her arms and glared at him. "Teach her things. Spend time with her… Bond with her! Let her know that you love her!"
"Okay… I'll do that," Ganondorf muttered.
"Don't tell it to me! Tell it to her!" Leela motioned at her daughter, who was amusing herself by casting small fire spells above her fingers.
Ganondorf glared from his apparent baby momma to his apparent baby, disdain and broken pride blocking up his throat from any kind of helpful words. Clearing his throat and swallowing his pride, he finally spoke up.
"I… er… what's her name?"
"My name is Pandora Lestat Bloodmoon," Ganondorf's daughter said, making the heavy metal symbol with one hand and lowering her head solemnly.
Leela eyed her daughter and rolled her eyes. "Her name is Genna."
"Genna," Ganondorf pronounced, getting used to saying it. "Okay. Well, um… Genna..."
He rose from his seat and kneeled down in front of the girl. She eyed him with complete disgust.
"Genna… I am your father, Lord Ganondorf Dragmire, King of Thieves and soon-to-be the Evil King of all Hyrule. You may address me as 'Father', 'Sir', 'My Lord' and, if you want to get really affectionate, 'Your Majesty'."
Genna raised her eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.
Ganondorf sighed deeply and stood up, turning back to Leela and Aveil. "See, Lily, I just… I'm right in the middle of a new project and I don't have TIME to be spending with a girl right now—"
"IT'S LEELA!" Leela shrieked, shattering somebody's glass cup about forty stories down the Impenetrable Fortress of Darkness. "AND I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF RECEIVING A SCHOLARSHIP TO DESERT COLOSSUS UNIVERSITY WHEN I GOT WITH YOU, BOOBEAR! I COULD HAVE GONE TO COLLEGE AND BEEN A REAL SCIENTIST, BOOBEAR, BUT I MADE SACRIFICES FOR YOU AND YOU HAD BETTER DO THE SAME FOR ME OR I'LL MAKE IT SO IT'S PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO EVER FATHER ANY MORE CHILDREN IRRESPONSIBLY, YOU SON OF A BITCH."
Aveil stepped away from her quickly. Genna blew a bubble with her cinnamon-flavored bubblegum and rolled her eyes, replacing the other earphone on her iPod as another song came on. "Whatever, Mom…"
Ganondorf winced as thick, miserable tears rolled down Leela's cheek. "Oh, I had the world on a platter and you took it away from me in a moment of passion! I gave everything to you, Boobear! I lost EVERYTHING! All I've had all these years is the daughter we made with our irresponsible and badly-timed love! And now you want to deny her, you want to deny that that love ever existed between us!" She wailed melodramatically, throwing herself to the floor.
"Aw… Leela, it… it isn't like that…" Ganondorf stepped towards her and tried to comfort her by waving his hand in midair like he didn't know what to do with it.
"It IS like that! Don't pretend you ever loved me!"
"That's because I didn't," Ganondorf pointed out under his breath. "I was using you."
"Do you guys mind?" Genna suddenly spoke up darkly, removing an earphone and glaring at the adults. "You're drowning out 'Renegade'."
Suddenly, something cracked inside Ganondorf's cold, cruel heart. Something melted away and he was left with a deep, loving smile on his face.
"'Renegade'? By Styx?" he asked curiously, sidling over towards Genna.
"Yeah. I love Styx. They're my favorite band," she said quietly.
"Mine too. Mine too."
There was a long moment of silence, during which the entire plot of a Father/Daughter bonding movie took place and both Ganondorf and Genna were left with warm, fuzzy feelings deep within them, the fuzzy feelings that would be all but absent from a Father and Daughter who had never met before and were suddenly forced into spending time together. We could attribute it to the fact that Leela had waxed on and on about how great Ganondorf was the entire time Genna was growing up, or that the shared musical love of that 70's band everybody loved to rag on back then but everyone loves now was just too much for the natural awkwardness and tension to stand up against.
This made it possible for the plot of the rest of the fanfic to take place, with Ganondorf and his oddly-close daughter heading out to jointly take over Hyrule the way some fathers and daughters would go out to the Girl Scout square dance and dominate the "Boot-Scootin' Boogie" competition.
"D'awwww. Daddy's Little Girl," he grinned and rumpled Genna's hair. "Genna, darling, would you like to come conquer Hyrule with Daddy? It'd be a really nice way for you to see what Daddy does all day, and for Mommy to leave us alone!"
"Oh YES, Daddy!" Genna shrilled in her most sickly sweet little girl voice.
Ganondorf eyed Leela over his shoulder and waggled his eyebrows at her as though to say "HEY, HEY LOOK AT ME!". He cackled maniacally and the thunder outside lit up the sky through the windows. He took Genna by the shoulder, whooshed his cape over his shoulder and led her to the door. "We're going to have SO much fun, pumpkin!"
"OKEE DAD!" Genna giggled.
Leela's eyes watered and she wiped away a tear as her daughter and baby daddy left together, Ganondorf merrily skipping and humming an old Gerudo ditty about disemboweling people.
Aveil coughed and went to go stab something.
"So I was dabbling in ancient summoning spells a few weeks ago, Daddy, and I thought I'd see if I couldn't try summoning you back out of the Sacred Realm… Mommy always whined about you spending so much time there," Genna was explaining as she rode alongside Ganondorf across the last stretches of rusty brown before the green grass of Hyrule Field. "And where is it we're going, Daddy?"
"To Hyrule Castle," Ganondorf's eyes narrowed and he gritted his teeth into an unsettling smile. "Daddy's got some unfinished business to settle with Princess Zelda and the Sages…"
"What kind of unfinished business?" Genna asked curiously.
"Daddy is going to storm the castle and force the guards into surrender, then defeat the Sages one by one and lock them each away in an unnecessarily complicated deathtrap of a dungeon. Then, Daddy is going to lay a curse of unspeakable evil on the head of the Hero of Time, a curse that will screw up the mechanics of gameplay in some terribly annoying way that will spread out the length of the game much longer than the original 15 hour play-through, possible only if you have a game guide or a reliable FAQ site. And unless everything goes wrong, I will conquer all Hyrule and regain the two missing pieces of the Triforce, thereby making myself immortal and the undisputed ruler of all the world for eternity. That is, of course, unless the Hero of Time manages to thwart me again by traversing the land, gathering ancient weapons of mass power and destruction and using them to defeat my demonic hoards and make his way to my stronghold, where I shall challenge him one-on-one, use some lame-ass technique to kill him and fail, only to be killed myself and locked away until the next time I can be fanwanked back to life by Nintendo."
"Will you buy me those black earrings I saw in the market?"
"Of course, pumpkin."
"Yay!"
Two death-black horses galloped across the field and on their way to Hyrule's destiny, a high-pitched wailing noise preceding them on their way…
"THE JIG IS UP, THE NOOSE IS OUT, THEY FINALLY FOUND MEEE! THE RENEGADE WHO… HAD IT MADE BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!"
"NEVA MORE TO GO ASTRAY! THIS'LL BE THE END T'DAY OF THE WANTED MAAAAN!"
"This song speaks to my SOUL…"
IN THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MYSTICAL OBJECT OF FATE!
Ganondorf DOES SOMETHING EVIL!
Princess Zelda tries to stop him, but IS PUT OUT OF COMMISSION BECAUSE HER POWERS ONCE AGAIN PROVE TO BE ALL TALK AND NO USE!
Link is HAPLESSLY LURED INTO SAVING THE WORLD!
And Genna THROWS A HISSY FIT BECAUSE HER DAD WON'T LET HER GO TO JIMMY SPARKMAN'S PARTY ON SATURDAY NIGHT AND HE'S LIKE TOTALLY SO DREAMY!
Sounds like you've read it all before? YOU PROBABLY HAVE!