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English
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Part 4 of Short King and Nerd Queen
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Hebe's Cup of De-Aged Characters
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Published:
2025-06-26
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2025-08-13
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10/10
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Eight Legendary Heroes vs. Two Gremlins & the Entire Gerudo Population

Summary:

Princess Zelda of Hyrule has two best friends: Link, her personal Knight, and Riju, the Chief of the Gerudo. After a Sheikah research mishap turns Link and Zelda into children and strands them in the Gerudo desert, they encounter a band of disguised Yiga. When they escape, Riju teams up with them to create a plan to deal with these strange Yiga and their undoubtedly sinister intentions. And what is that plan?

Shameless trolling until they finally break character, of course!

For their part, the Chain is just confused and concerned. It's not every day you arrive in a new Hyrule to find a very small Hero and Princess blowing up monsters with high-yield explosives, after all.

Chapter 10: Bonus AU

Notes:

This was supposed to be a little extra addition to Child's Play but... well... it just kept getting longer. So, here we are.

Chapter 1: Molduga Spectator Sport

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, Princess Zelda of Hyrule had two best friends: Link, her personal Knight, and Riju, the Chief of the Gerudo. Because of these two best friends, when her dear (but not best) friend Purah began to complain about monopolization of her research materials, Princess Zelda made the fateful decision to create her own research lab, cannibalizing the technology from a Great Plateau shrine and then using a different shrine in the Gerudo Desert as her headquarters so she would have a convenient excuse to visit Riju whenever she liked.

Link, needless to say, required no excuse to be visited, as he hardly ever left her side.

This decision by Princess Zelda was the reason she and her knightly best friend found themselves in their current situation: accidentally reduced to the age of six with a map frozen over the Gerudo Desert, stumbling in a daze around Tera’s fairy fountain beneath the Leviathan bones.

“Oh dear,” said Tera, scooping them up in her hand. “Oh my! You’re so… tiny!”

“Could you undo it?” Zelda asked.

“Oh dear, no. This isn’t magic, lovely. Even if it was, my power doesn’t lie in breaking spells.”

Link grumbled something deprecating against Sheikah science, and Zelda couldn’t even begrudge him for it.

“I suppose we’ll just have to return to Hateno and ask Purah, then,” she sighed.

Link said, “We should go back to Gerudo Town first. It might be safer to send a messenger than to go like this.” He turned to the great fairy. “But first… could you resize all of our clothes?”

Link wanted to ””briefly”” test his ability to fight at his new six-year-old height. Zelda stridently insisted that it was not necessary (and would in fact cause her tremendous stress). Link humbly agreed that she was correct, and off they went, dressed in miniaturized Gerudo vai clothing to combat the desert heat.

And yet, about thirty minutes later, Zelda somehow found herself sitting on Link’s shoulders, screaming and throwing bombs from the slate as a Molduga chased them and their sand seal across the dunes. She reflected on the situation as she threw another bomb and her best friend cackled beneath her: Link was remarkably winsome when he wanted to be.

“It’s catching up!” she told him, yelling over the wind. Her veil, like Link’s, had been stuffed into her belt for later.

”Hold on!” he told her in return. “When it falls, we hit it!”

“Link!”

The Molduga lunged out of the sand, snapping up the round bomb, and Zelda punched the button to detonate it midair. Stunned, the monster bellowed and slammed into the ground with jarring force. Link immediately swung the seal around, making Zelda yelp and curl over him, holding on for dear life as the centrifugal force of the turn threatened to send her flying.

“BOMBS AWAY!” he yelled gleefully, firing off six volleys of three from his Lynel bow. With her own (admittedly gleeful) yelling, she summoned up and lobbed a square bomb. The detonation was very satisfying.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, that was when eight future headaches arrived to witness them administering tremendous violence.

“YAAAAAH!” Link yelled, untying himself from the seal and charging across the sand toward the Molduga. Zelda helped him by swapping the bow for a sword, and gave herself one too. She might not have been the best with a blade, but it was hard to miss when the target was several hundred times her size and a hand’s breadth away. From her perch on Link’s shoulder, she stabbed with enthusiasm.

“It’s waking up!” Zelda warned Link as the Molduga stirred from its daze. They hadn’t quite been able to kill it in one go. Link broke off and sprinted away, tossing her his sword as he went. She put both away in the slate, hand ready over the bow icon for when they were being pulled behind the seal again.

From a fair distance behind them, they both heard someone yell “what the F⁠**K is that!”

Link had to be single-mindly focused on getting them out of range of the Molduga, but Zelda was able to crane her neck around to see a startlingly large crowd of men sprinting across the sand. The group’s attention was split between Link and Zelda and the Molduga. They also all looked suspiciously like her knight.

She bent down as Link hastily tied himself back to the sand seal. “Yiga!” she hissed into his ear.

His eloquent reply was a string of loud swears.

“We have to get out of here before they realize!” she said, ignoring the cussing.

“If we run now, they’ll know!”

“We were throwing explosives at a monster most people hope they’ll never even see, much less fight! How could they not know!”

“We’re not usually this small! Just hide the slate!”

By now they were speeding away and the Molduga had started to dive beneath the sand. Zelda opened her mouth to rebut him, then paused. “Fair point,” she admitted. “Perhaps we can deflect suspicion, then. Gerudo Town does seem the place for precocious warrior youths to be.”

They circled the Molduga, prepared to finish it off by bow, and were surprised to realize that the Yiga were already attempting—badly—to do the same. One of them narrowly dodged being swallowed whole, but the brief moment that the beast was above the sand was all the rest needed to start hitting it with their weapons.

“Huh,” said Link, “they aren’t usually this helpful unless they want something.”

“Information?” Zelda speculated. “Perhaps it’s a good thing we stayed to deflect suspicion.”

Link pulled his veil back on to distract from his scarring and circled the group until the Molduga was dead, which didn’t take long with eight grown men hitting it. The sand seal came to a stop a respectable distance away from the smallest of the Yiga, also ensuring that they were as far as possible from the most heavily-armored. Zelda was equally careful to ensure that the slate stayed hidden between her and Link, wrapped up in her own veil.

“Hey!” said the youngest, who had a lobster on his tunic—actually, who was wearing a tunic Zelda knew for a fact Link possessed, if in a slightly different cut. It was a tribute to one of the ancient heroes of legend both he and she had spent many hours studying. “Are you two okay?? Why were you fighting this… thing??”

Zelda glanced down. Link glanced up. “The Molduga?” Zelda said slowly, wondering why they would pretend not to know what it was. “We were sand-surfing when it attacked us. Thank you for the help.”

“Didn’t look like you needed much help,” one of them muttered, and Zelda felt Link’s neck muscles tense under her.

“Hey why are you out here?” Link asked loudly, unwilling to let them think about the implications for too long. “Are you looking for someone?”

Zelda kicked his side with her heel. He obediently shut up.

“As a matter of fact, we are,” said one. He looked at them intently, but not with full recognition. “We’re looking for the Hero.”

Link and Zelda kept their cool. “Really? All the way out here?” Zelda asked. “Well, we haven’t seen him. It is just me and my best friend who is definitely a girl out and about, uh, sand surfing. For fun. We love sand surfing. Or surfing of any kind really.”

“Yeah, we love surfing in sand, water… snow… Hey, try Hebra! The Hero’s probably in a mood for snow,” said Link. Zelda kicked him again.

“Right…” said the man slowly. He knelt, which was so unexpected that it was unnerving, and looked at Link even more closely. “Hey, is your name… Link?”

“No,” Link lied, indignant. “My name is Spicy! And I’m a girl! Link is a boy! And a hundred and seventeen! Do I look like a hundred-seventeen-year-old boy to you?!”

Zelda barely resisted the powerful urge to slap her hand over her eyes. She quickly poked his neck instead. Enough! Retreat! Too many terrible lies!

The Yiga blinked at his answer and made a strange face. “Uh. Listen, you’re not in trouble—“

“That’s right, we’re not, so good luck finding the Hero bye!” said Link forcefully, correctly interpreting her signals to him. He spurred the seal into motion. She held on tight as they lurched away.

“Hey! Wait!” the Yiga shouted after them. A few of them ran, but had no hope of catching up on foot.

“Only teleport if they start teleporting too!” Zelda hissed to Link. They remained tense as the distance between them and the Yiga grew, but somehow… no one used their clan arts to chase after them. As Gerudo Town’s walls grew closer and closer, they started to relax.

“Do you think they realized?” Link asked. “They didn’t try anything, and they always try something if they know it’s us.”

“It seems like they did not,” Zelda agreed uneasily. “Still. We should warn Riju.”

“Yeah…” Link scratched his jaw under the veil. “Speaking of which… how are we gonna get into the throne room?”

“What do you mean? We’re going to walk in, of course.” He didn’t look up at her, but she could feel his skeptical silence. She frowned. “Well, why wouldn’t we be able to walk in?”

“We’re two itty-bitty Hylian children, Zelda. The guards will stop us probably before we even enter the city.” Which would be soon, since they were rapidly approaching the gates. In fact, Link slowed the seal down near the shrine so they could talk longer.

She blinked rapidly. “Yes, but—oh. Drat.” She pondered their predicament for a moment. “You have a plan, then?”

He grinned. She knew just by feeling, though she couldn’t see it. “Yep!”

“Hey! Riju!”

Buliara startled badly at the voices that came from behind the throne, leveling her spear at them. Once she realized ‘they’ were two children, she hastily pulled her speartip up. “Who are you!” she barked. Riju herself was sitting straight up on her throne, twisted around to look at Link and Zelda as they scampered around to face her.

“Sorry,” Zelda said apologetically, trying to catch her breath. That had been a difficult climb, even with her Knight’s help! “There was… a mishap at the shrine.”

“It can’t be,” said Riju, eyes wide. She put a hand over her mouth. “Zelda? Link?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Zelda. “But setting aside our physical state for a moment, we have an urgent warning! We were, uh… sand surfing when a large group of Yiga accosted us. We don’t think they quite realized who we were, but they were not far from the town, and they were all disguised to look suspiciously akin to Link.”

Buliara scowled at Link, immediately seeing through Zelda’s awkward omission. “You were fighting a Molduga? In this state?”

“We were winning!” Link protested.

“You involved the Princess in fighting a Molduga in this state?!”

“What’s done is done,” Zelda interjected diplomatically. “We need to focus on the threat of the Yiga. There has already been a considerable delay between our encounter with them and our arrival here.”

Riju craned her neck around to look behind her throne. “Did you climb up here?”

“With great difficulty, yes. Please focus.”

Fortunately, they were interrupted by a guard from outside. “CHIEF!” she yelled, sprinting in. “CHEIF!” As soon as she was close enough, she slammed down into a bow on one knee. Link winced, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“What is it, Ploka?” asked Riju.

“There are eight voe at the town entrance looking for—!” She faltered as she caught sight of Link and Zelda. “Them! Two little Hylian vhevi!”

“Yiga,” Buliara growled, ramming the butt of her spear against the stone in anger.

“Yiga!” echoed Ploka with realization.

Link scowled. “They must have realized who we are after all.”

“No, don’t be hasty. They may only want information, like they did out there,” said Zelda. “Otherwise, wouldn’t they attack outright or infiltrate with female disguises?”

Buliara growled again. “We must drive them off now!”

“Wait,” said Riju. She paused, considering. “Attacking them immediately is a risk, especially if they don’t know for certain who they’re looking for.” She paused again. Then she looked up, and there was a wicked gleam in her eye. “I have a better idea.”

Despite her age and small stature, Riju struck an imposing figure as she walked to the gate to speak with the Yiga herself, flanked by Buliara and eight guards. They stopped in the shade of the gate. Link and Zelda peeked up over the wall, hidden just close enough to overhear without being easily seen.

“I am the Chief of the Gerudo,” said Riju. Shockingly, most of the Yiga bowed to her.

“They’re getting better at this!” Link whispered. He sounded delighted to have a greater challenge than usual.

“Shh!” Zelda hissed.

“What business does a group of voe have here? Only vai are allowed within the town.”

The one-eyed Yiga stepped forward. “We encountered two Hylian children battling a monster, dressed much like you and your guards.” He gestured back the way they’d come. “When we asked questions, they fled here. I’m sure you can understand why we’re worried about their safety.”

Riju hummed. “You think two unaccompanied Hylian vhevi came into Gerudo Town without my guards noticing? You surely must be addled by the desert heat, traveler. There are no Hylian vhevi here, much less without mothers.” Before he could respond, she turned to her guards. “Quickly! Give these voe water and escort them to the Bazaar at once!”

The Yiga with no pants exclaimed in annoyance. “What are you talking about? They’re right there! And one of them is a ‘voe!’” he said, pointing in the direction of Link and Zelda. They quickly ducked out of sight.

There was a pause. “Do you see anything, Buliara?” Riju asked.

“No, Chief,” said Buliara, echoed by the guards. “Unaccompanied vhevi would have been reported immediately. The voe is hallucinating from heat exhaustion.”

“Oh dear,” said Riju loudly, drowning out the Yiga’s cry of ‘No I’m not!’ “Quickly, then, drag them along if you must! The oasis waters will restore their minds!”

“Wait—“ said the leader, but it was too late. Riju turned and went back into the town, heels clicking smartly across the stone, while her guards advanced on the group. Some protested more than others until the noise abruptly stopped. Link and Zelda shuffled to a new spot, then slowly peeked back over the wall again to see the one-eyed Yiga giving his compatriots forbidding looks.

They ducked again when he glanced in their direction. After that, the group accepted the water and departed for the Bazaar without objection.

Link chuckled deviously once he was sure they wouldn’t be overheard. “That was hilarious. I can’t believe they thought they’d get one over on Riju.”

“It’s quite remarkable,” Zelda agreed with a grin of her own. “Still, this does complicate things somewhat. We should certainly call an escort here instead of attempting to leave on our own.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, eyes glinting. “And until Impa and Purah get here, we can have some fun with these guys and find out what they’re planning.”