The Repairman looked back and forth between the two rifts. His siren light was telling him there was a crack here in these catacombs, but only one. The other one must be part of this world. Hmm. After a moment’s thought, he shrugged, and began to pour cement into both holes. He figured, should Link come here, he would have something for the job anyway.
Little did he know that Link, indeed, was there. In the crack on the left, getting something.
The Repairman gave a self-satisfied nod as the cement hardened and became indistinguishable from the wall around it. He was about to turn and leave, when…
BOOM!
One of the cracks exploded and Link emerged, panting and looking for the one who nearly trapped him. Seeing the Repairman guiltily shrink back, he leapt at the blob and began to whale on him with his sword. The Repairman, meanwhile, struck back with a flyswatter. They were screaming “CHUNGUS!” and “I’M SORRY I DIDN’T–” respectively as the huge ball of unusually harmless violence rolled further into the dungeon…
(You can’t tell me you don’t see Albie and the Repairman in a comical fight to this song as they run through multiple doors a la Scooby Doo)
[[Gah, I CAN see it!]]
Light shot his impudent descendant a glare that could have melted the polar ice caps.
“I most certainly did not attack cuccos for fun! I told you it was an accident!”
Sparky floats over to the Wall, inspecting the gaping hole that was now in it. He happened to notice the three faces on the other side and gave them a friendly wave.
“Hello! They sure are taking their sweet time fixing this thing, huh?”
Blue grumbles, stomping over to the elder hero and yanking him by the wrist back from the Wall. Green and Vio had already given him the run down over what behaviors you should avoid where it was concerned.
“Cut it out Sparky you’re making it worse! You’re the oldest here you’re supposed to set an example, geez!”
“Awww but when else will the break be big enough to say ‘hi’ through? You’re such a meanie Blue!”
“Ah,” the Repairman nodded, more flattered than anything else to be compared with something from a set canon. “I…guess we could see what could be causing issues…?”
“No, no, it’ll be fine,” the Repairman replied to Art’s offer to fix it, a little too quickly. “I got it.”
I waved back to one of the few Links I actually played as before. What a cheerful kid! I looked forward to the rest of the new Hyrule tour–
Oh, right. The Wall. *ahem*
The Wall was definitely suffering for this. The cracks and tiny holes went up about a story.
And the Repairman’s light turned bright enough to give himself a headache. He struggled to grab his tool cart and get over there NOW!
He didn’t even care who did it or what happened anymore. All that concerned him for the moment was fixing the one thing he was made to maintain and was very important (for some reason).
He pulled some of a very long ladder from one of the toolboxes and leaned it up against the Wall. He ignored everything around him as he clambered up the latter, intent on making sure this was not where he failed.
“A poe? Where?… oh.” Blue hmmed a little as his gaze settled on the Repairman. “Oh, he’s not a poe. For the record, they’re usually too far gone to listen to even us, anyways.”
Light rolled his eyes at his descendant. “Perhaps if you were a bit less impulsive and didn’t assume the worst out of every stranger you meet, you’d have known that.”
“Hehe, I think everyone was just a little too um, energetic about this whole thing. Except Blue, for once Blue was the calm and reasonable one, haha.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, punk?”
Sparky completely ignores the irate Hero. “So how about we just start over and introduce ourselves properly, ok?”
The Repairman sighed in relief as “Art” sputtered back to life. He wouldn’t have to worry about any “resets” or “bad endings” or “vengeful ghosts behind him.”
“Yeah, I’m not a….” he chimed in, before realizing something, “what is a Poe, anyhow?”
At Sparky’s suggestion, he took a deep breath, before saying, “All right. I’m the Fourth Wall Repairman, and I was just here tonight to fix a break that someone had to…”
He coughed.
“I mean, that’s been under some stress lately. I haven’t been waking your friend up.”
He winced as the lawnmower, left unattended, plowed roaring into a wall.
“…Now, we don’t know for sure that that woke her up…” he attempted, giving a desperate smile as he knew that wasn’t helping his case, “…But I’ve only been here tonight.”
*distressed ghost noises*
“Art! Aaaaaaaaah INKY GO FIND SOME HEART FRUITS!!!”
“The grass! Go cut the grass!”
Blue just zips off to places unknown, returning a minute later as a wolf carrying a potion in his teeth, muttering telepathically about why he’s always the one running to get potions for incapacitated living Heroes and scaring the living daylights out of shopkeepers. He sets it down by the Repairman and returns to ghost form.
“Here, have him drink that!”
At Light’s screams, the Repairman jumped, flinging the roll of gauze quite some ways away.
He turned around in an instant.
“Heart fruit, got it wheredoI–?”
He wasn’t about to question cutting the grass to find some heart fruit, so he nodded and pulled an already-running lawnmower out of his toolbox and got to work.
Occasionally, a k-thunk sound could be heard over the roar of the mower, and it would spit something out. The Repairman would either cradle it if it was a heart, or just drop it if it wasn’t.
By the time he had about fifteen hearts, a wolf approached him with a red potion. When it turned out to be Blue, the Repairman snatched the bottle up.
“Of course!” he said to himself. Red potions were always good, right?
He dashed back to the physical Link and took a second to frantically look back and forth at the hearts and the potion. Which one would…?
No time! He stuck a funnel in “Art’s” mouth, dumping both the heart fruits and the contents of the bottle into it.
“Okay, c’mon, wake up, you shouldbeplentyhealthynow…” the Repairman rapidly begged, before descending into incomprehensible gibberish and finally falling silent.
“Ack! Gross your hands are getting in my mouth!”
Link continued to fight against the small blob creature. He didn’t want to hurt it at all, but he couldn’t help it and lost his temper. The young hero drew his tornado rod and held it above his head. With a wave, the propellers began to twirl and send the Repairman’s tools flying about in a strong gust of wind. The hero kept himself from soaring in the air by gripping onto the cracks on the wall. Before he knew it, everything came flopping back down in place as soon as the gales died down.
“Listen buddy, the sanctuary’s sacred grounds around here so I want an explaination. Tell me what this–”
CLANG
Before he could finish his sentence, Link was already lying flat on his face with an industrial duty wrench by his side. He didn’t move, but simply let out a pained groan. His fingers twitched slightly as if trying to grasp for something. Eventually he fell completely silent, not making a single sound or movement.
The Repairman did not have the grip of a hero. He merely had the grip of a blob of ink, so it wasn’t long before he was sent screaming into the winds.
He splatted on the ground just a second after. He reformed to greet Link demanding to know about the Wall.
He flinched as a rather heavy wrench landed on the kid’s head, causing him to collapse.
“Ah, geez,” the Repairman winced. “Are you…okay…?”
Nothing.
Okay, this was bad, this was very bad. He didn’t just…kill off a protagonist, did he? He knew death didn’t have a lot of meaning in most of the universes he visited, but even he knew a video game death was different. It was unpredictable. It could alter the world in odd ways. Besides, what would the Link ghosts say if they got an addition thanks to him?
“W-Wait right there,” he stammered, frantically running to his tool cart. He quickly pushed it closer, dragged out his blue toolbox and began digging.
Okay, somewhere in here there had to be different pickups from different game universes (C’mon, they were just lying around!). It took less than two minutes to find different healthy-looking things, but the Repairman felt every second.
Did he hear beeping…? He shook that thought off, and got to work.
He started by throwing a green spotted mushroom to Link. It somehow felt right, but it just bounced off with no apparent effect. Same lack of results with a pixelated turkey leg. And the oversized pill.
The teal medkit split open on the ground, scattering gauze, bacitracin, an ice pack, and several hypodermic needles.
Hey, that might work!
After a bit of struggling, the Repairman pulled the stretcher out of his toolbox and laid Link onto it gently.
Okay, so…just wrapping the bandaging around the head should do the trick, right…?
“Ack! Hey that’s my face!” Link retorted, feeling someone’s grubby hands smear his cheeks. Geez, what was this guy’s problem!? He then gripped onto both sides of the crack with firm hands and used his strength to push himself upright. The young hero, with all his training as a blacksmith, had no problem sticking his head upright despite the Repairman’s efforts.
“Will you get off of me already!?”
Link huffed in annoyance, glaring down at the other small being before him. He seemed so… harmless. Was the cause of the noise so late at night really just a poe? Well, annoyances aside, it didn’t want to harm him. Otherwise it would have by now. And it was smart enough to talk.
“Ugh just… Listen, buddy. I’ve got a friend who’s been falling asleep in the middle of sermons because something is making noise outside of her room at night and scaring her to death. I don’t suppose you’ve got some kinda explanation for that, do you?”
He peeked inside the crack, or at least attempted to. It was small and could barely fit his head in… He’s traveled through many cracks and wanted to know what was so bad about this one.
“What is this anyways? This doesn’t look like Lorule… At least not a part I’ve seen. What kind of poe talks and travels to weird places like this?”
The Repairman noticed this Link grabbing at the break. His eyes widened.
“Nonononono–”
But it was too late. The hero righted himself right on the Wall, and the inkblot could do nothing but slide off.
“Now–” he began, but apparently Link had other things on his mind.
“Hey,” he said, putting his hands up defensively, “Sorry if I woke your friend up, but I was only here tonight. I don’t know what’s been scaring her!”
He winced as Link poked his head into the fault, but realized there was little point in pulling him out.
“Please…get out of there,” he begged. “It’s…it’s not Low Rule…the crack’s not supposed to be there…”
He could see that the crack was rapidly worsening as the hero kept his head in there.
Even if there was no point, he had to try to pull him out. Who knew what would happen if he was left unchecked? Who knew what horrors Link was seeing right now…?
Link stared at the crack behind the sanctuary, wondering if maybe this was how Ravio had been able to travel around between worlds. Was this one of his hidden passageways? With crossed arms, the young hero let out a curious hum.
He paused when he heard something. Movement? And some kind of metal clanging together. He was hesitant, but then again Ceres had been complaining about unexplained sounds in the middle of the night. Considering she had spent time as a painting with Creepy the Clown, he wanted to at least reassure her the freak show was long gone.
“H-Hello?” He called out, looking carefully between the crack in the wall. “Can anyone hear me at all?”
The Repairman froze at the strange (but somehow familiar) voice. He hoped, in the night, his inky form wouldn’t be seen. His siren light was hastily covered with a rag he found. A dim red could still be seen, but at least it wasn’t immediately obvious.
He carefully looked around, and saw a younger Link staring right into the crack. Oh dear. He could feel his light intensifying under the cloth as he watched the kid calling into it.
Without thinking, the Repairman went up to him and tried to push him away from the crack.
The Repairman found an oddly large crack in the Wall here, in a Hyrule. It wasn’t the same Hyrule as the one where he met those ghosts, but he didn’t question it. The more he thought about the timeline thing, the more his head hurt and the brighter his light burned.
Instead, he pulled his cart closer and began rooting through one of his toolboxes. This should be pretty quick…
Siblings-a-Fixin' 