Four Separate Paths Au - Blog Posts

I was struck with inspiration

original under the cut

woe, art dump be apon ye.

I've decided that ms paint is what is gonna get me to make art more regularly, and it turns out I was right! Art is fun again [air-horns]!!!!

I feel the need to explain my au a lil bit. Cause I have more ideas than brain (like independent of each other) that I also want to give a lil attention to like my loz story au thing, and another one for four swords that actually has a story and not just vibes.

Warning for a wall of text and also mentions of child abuse.

The "Four Separate Paths" au is an au that was partially based on a dream, partially based on a story I made based on four swords that just went full circle back to it. In the au, after the defeat of Vaati, when they normally would have re-merged under normal circumstances, they don't, and three out of the four of them argue about what to do next.

In the original draft of the au, Vio is kinda just, stuck in his own head thinking about what to do next. Barely listening to the argument as he tries to figure out where he could start in his path to getting them back into one Link again. In the comic I added her to help verbalize some of what Vio was thinking to more fluidly share it with the readers.

But the RBG boys have already kinda... made peace with this. They care less about remaining four people, and more about where they want to go and what they want to do next.

Green wants to go back to how things were, basically. Thinking that with all four of them it would be easier to defend the kingdom, and now that they know how to work as a team they would be even more effective than Link was alone (I realize now I kinda put Red and Green in trope version of themselves. I fking love the two of them and their characters... doesn't mean I always know what to do with them narratively ,Xb).

Red wants to focus on repairing the kingdom, and helping others around the kingdom learn to better defend themselves from the dangers of people like Vaati and Shadow.

Blue wants to travel and expand helping people to more than just hyrule (something I stated in the comic)

Vio ends up going with Blue when they all split ways because he knows that, once he figures out how to get them back to being one, Blue would be the hardest to track down. In Vio's mind this is just another challenge to overcome, and he thinks that- rather than being okay with staying split -the other three just don't think about how to "fix the problem", so now he has to do it.

Shadow's still alive in this au. He's just a part of their shadows more permanently. Not sure if I want him to be revealed to all of them or if I wanna stick with the funny idea I had of only Red knowing he's still around and the two of them bonding over Shadow filling Red in on what's going on with Blue and Vio over tea.

Blue and Vio travel for awhile, Blue slowly making a name for himself as a "wandering hero" as he does exactly what he set out to do by helping people. Anywhere from small shit like helping an old lady carry her groceries to bigger stuff like stopping burglars and bandits. Vio spends most of his time researching magic and stuff, hoping to understand why they stayed split even if he doesn't have access to hyrules magic books, but he helps with the bigger stuff even if he prefers staying to the background (good thing Blue purposefully makes it easy for him by making his personality 2x bigger).

Eventually an old man finds Blue and Vio while they're in between towns. He says he's been a world traveller his whole life and can tell them little tidbits of information and guide them on their adventures. Both are reasonably of a suspicious old man approaching them in the middle of nowhere as the sky darkened, Vio being like "this guy is clearly doesn't have good intentions, we should entertain him and then ditch him at the next town" and Blue is like "idk, maybe we should take him up on his offer, keep you enemies closer and all that, plus, free guide!" And so they let the old man stick around.

The old man turns out to be controlling af. Hiding behind the two of them at the first sign of danger, and then telling them off for having fun. He also starts telling people that mister "wandering hero" is his protege, and that he "taught the kid everything he knows."

It makes Blue and Vio really uncomfortable, but they put up with it because A) he's kinda useless in a fight so "isn't able to do any real damage", B) they do technically need a guide being that it's saved them a lot of problems, and C) Blue finds it funny to get back at him by immediately after the old man walks away turn to the person he lied to and tell them that he's "senile" and "confusing himself for grandma!" ... that sentence made sense, right?

Anyways.

At one point Blue comes across a family of boys that have been terrorizing a few towns for years. After him and Vio investigate more they learn the disturbing history of the family. The father is forcing his sons to do this stuff for his wealth, while the few daughters the man has are forced to clean their shitty-falling-apart-mansion until they get sick, and also being used to keep the brothers in line.

Blue doesn't want to kill these kids, especially after overhearing one of the younger kids complain about having to do all this stuff he knows is wrong only to be silenced by an older brother afraid of seeing his sibling get hurt for speaking out. So he figures out a plan to save the kids.

He kills the father, gets the ill daughters to a hospital and then fights the people of the three towns to keep the sons out away from the gallows. He does save the kids, but the older kids do still go to prison, though they do it willingly.

The old man, later in the day, has the gall to reprimand Blue and say he should have just ended the whole family because whether it was by force or not they were still guilty of doing some bad shit. Blue fights him on this, Vio stepping in when it starts to get violent. The old man leaves the inn in a huff, and the two don't see him for the rest of the night. Vio unable to sleep thanks to the sense of foreboding.

The next morning, when Blue goes to visit the kids to say goodbye before heading off to the next town wrapping up with the older kids, he finds the old man standing in front of the cell while two guards escort the boys there out of the cell. After being asked what's going on, the old man says "they're being hung for their crimes. Obviously." Which, y'know, sets off Blue, who tells him he's being monstrous.

The old man tells Blue that he's being stupid to let them live, and that his kindness "weakness" will get him killed one day. To prove his point he pulls out a charm Blue had never seen before from his pocket, and yeets Blue into the dark world, out of sight of the guards and kids to make sure the next part of his plan goes smoothly.

Vio sees it though, and he hides for a little while, trying to figure out what to do while he keeps an eye on the old man.

The younger kids are brought forward with the older kids, and the people of the three towns (who had been brought together for this) are confused about what's going on and why the kids are being put in line for the gallows despite the fact that they had agreed that- given the context -the punishments the kids received were acceptable?

The old man claims that the kids killed Blue, and holds up a blood stained blue tunic that Vio thought had been thrown away after the fight they had weeks ago. He doesn't understand how the people think an obviously dry bloodstain came from at least a night ago, but I digress. The old man spins a conspiracy story of the kids teaming up, the ones in prison telling the ones not in prison what to do. Thanks to his position as Blue's "mentor" they believe him.

Things are looking bad for the kids. Until Vio gets a really bad idea. He's standing relatively in the middle of the crowd, easy to miss, at least until he starts laughing like a maniac. He's surprised with himself for how much like evil giddy glee the forced laughter sounds like. "You think it was them that killed him?"

Vio goes on to tell the confused and startled crowd that he killed Blue, and that the old man may have been convincing, but trying to pin their act on those kids was cowardice.

Yup, "their" act. Vio's dragging the old man down with him.

The people get out of Vio's way as he walks over to the old man, looking much more confident then he feels. Vio smugly turns back to the crowd and stats spinning his own story. One where he's jealous of Blue's fame and tired of being in his shadow, a story more than a little inspired by Shadow himself. He claims the old man had helped him, then says the old man just wanted the kids out of the way to make it less messy to clean up themselves, but Vio was "bored of that idea", so changed their plans.

Long story short, the people of the towns chase to two out. The old man showing more of his true colours.

Turns out, old man knows a shit ton of magic, and can fight better than Vio and Blue thought.

The old man starts hunting Vio down, eventually catching up to him and sealing him away in a different place then Blue.

The Cabin had nothing in it. Just one fireplace parallel to the door, cabinets that stored an infinite amount of food in them, a sink to wash dishes and get drinking water from, and a stack of wood for the fire. There was one note: "Don't let the fire go out. EVER." The Cabin was surrounded by eternal night and eternal soft snowfall. There was no bed, no blankets, no chairs. Just him, food, a fire, and firewood.

Meanwhile Shadow is loosing his mind over this whole situation. Goes into the dark world to get to Red and tell him about this (because I imagine the dark world is like a dream world, and makes it easier to travel from one place to another if you know how to travel through it, because dream logic is applied everywhere) and bumps into Blue, who's like "great! Can you get me out of here????"

This is how Shadow discovers he actually can still become hylian-shaped in the real world, it just requires help from Zelda. Whom he gets help from Red to tell that there is a major problem tm.

It takes awhile to get Vio out again, because they have to track down the old man and (ahem) convince to tell them where Vio was.

And that's kind of where my ideas run out. I know... not the greatest ending. Mostly because its not an ending. But it's all I've got for now.