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[shadowcourage]

Player Information

Name: Sair
Age: Old
Contact details: Plurk: Alwaysterrible Discord: Sair#6121
Other characters: Nope

Character Information

Name: Shadow Link
Canon: Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Manga
Canon Point: Three years post canon.
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: CRAU thewake
Age: 17

World Information: The Legend of Zelda. That game design of save the princess by running around a bunch of dungeons solving puzzles, collecting stuff, and beating up monsters in fantasy medievalish time.

Specific Kingdom: Hyrule.

TheWake takes place in Nautilus, the city of Change, an interdimensional nexus where people were Awakened. They were tasked to practice bending, try and change, and grow in power so they could ascend. They did this because Nautilus was 'Reality,' while their worlds were Dreaming. They were supposed to grow so they could protect the dreams from dangers and allow the worlds to continue living. While possible to 'canon update,' the sensation was more being an observer of canon with no effect on that history.

Personal History: Hyrule has a cycle of danger. The goddess blooded princess, the reborn hero, and the dark king. In this particular life, the princess and the reborn hero were childhood friends, and the dark king was trapped in the Dark World. The hero Link was the son of the royal guard captain, talented for his age, and ever loyal to his best friend.

And in this life in particular, the shadow of the heroes heart was not just a dark spell or a test, but an entity that was more aware of his owner, made from his literal shadow. Perhaps due to centuries of being bathed both in darkness and light. Shadow Link was capable of resenting Link, of anger at the fact he would never turn and acknowledge his shadow.

Lord Ganon recruited Shadow to be his agent. Shadow is the one who kidnaps Zelda, the six maidens, tricks Link into pulling the Four Sword to release Vaati, and seals the light of the sword. So while it splits Link into four, Green, Red, Blue, and Vio(let), the purifying light is suppressed. Shadow burns Castletown to the ground, and causes chaos around Hyrule, taunting and watching his owners, until there was an opportunity to separate them all. Its then he makes a move for his own goals.

When Link was split, the four took on parts of his personality. Green goal orientated, Red optimistic, Blue aggressive, and Vio cunning rationality. Shadow chose to approach Vio, the odd one out amongst the four, and made an offer of power, but even more, to be listened to. To be seen. Something he knew mattered, because it was the thing that mattered to him. And Vio agreed to his offer.

With Zelda captured, Red's four sword stolen during the separation, and Vio on the side of the darkness, Shadow was sure they would win. The Four Sword couldn't reach its full power without all four, after all. And with Vio on their side, Shadow had the acknowledgement he so desired and was willing to destroy the other Links. He would even taunt Zelda about their upcoming victory, though she still managed to get under his skin.

Eventually, the other three found Vio and Shadow, and when Green challenged Vio, he accepted. They dueled and it ended with Vio seemingly killing Green. Ecstatic at this display of loyalty, Shadow tells Vio everything. About how Vaati was a smokescreen, that Ganon was the real villain, and the Dark Mirror, an infinite well of dark power. Vio even proposes a plan to Shadow of using Zelda to defeat Ganon and take power for themselves. Shadow feels truly happy then, thinking Vio wanted to rule with him, and he offered up all his trust to him.

Hours later, he awoke to a commotion about a possible intruder, and Shadow checks the Dark Mirror to see where Blue and Red are...only to find Green alive. When he asks, the Dark Mirror shows what had happened before he awoke, only to see Vio attempting to destroy the mirror.

Vio had lied. Much like Shadow was able to get under the Links' skin because he knew their heart, Vio was able to use the same to fool Shadow and gather information. He had been a spy from the start. Shadow ordered his execution and the destruction of the two four swords, but the others arrived and saved him. Then they face off with Shadow.

When Shadows demands to know why Vio did what he did, Vio says he's not Shadow. He can't choose his own desires over being a hero. United, the four of them kill Shadow with the four swords.

....and then Shadow is pulled out of the Dark Mirror. It would not let him die, not as long as Ganon wanted his service. He told Shadow to deal with the Links that had arrived at the Tower of Winds, but Shadow was still suffering from his death. He was hurt and tired and utterly defeated emotionally.

However, the place the mirror had been summoned was the top of the Tower, where Zelda was. Zelda saw Shadow without any of his guard, and offers him compassion and acknowledgement. The light didn't have to hurt him. He was part of Link and he was capable of being a hero as well.

Then she was taken away for the sacrificial ceremony. And Shadow, having finally gotten something of what he wanted, from one of the two people who mattered to him, decided that nothing else mattered except saving her. Pretending to be Vio, he found the other three Links in the chaos and told them where they needed to go and how to fight Vaati, until he realized that, like himself, Vaati couldn't be killed thanks to the Dark Mirror.

So when Vio arrives, he sneaks off to the Dark Mirror. And throws a chair at it. It starts draining away his and Vaati's power, but he still has to finish the job, even as the Dark Mirror pleads for its life, showing him images of Vio to convince him to stop. He ignores it and even as Vaati arrives, he pushes it over and destroys the rest. It kills Vaati.

And it was killing him as the four Links arrive. He finally admits all he wanted was to be seen, and it felt good to help them. He wonders if he became an ally, the others assure him he was a friend, family, and Shadow fades into light with a smile.

It was honestly a surprise when he woke up as Link's shadow again. But with his owner at times looking back at him, he was content. Then Nautilius happened.

He does return briefly for a few years, just to check up. Its not as if Nautilus' return was any different from how he was normally. Link and Zelda were growing up in peace, and sometimes Link looked at spells to see about helping Shadow. Nothing came up, but it still made him happy to see the effort.

Then he returned to Nautilus. (Mostly because Shadow couldn't physically age on his own while in Nautilus despite being there years.)

Personality: First and foremost, Shadow is not a Hylian(type of human.) He's not even a full soul. He was born of the darkness of the hero's heart and grew into something more. He is greatly prone to negativity, and his one saving grace is he's also extremely smart and manipulative. It gives him a base to figure out how to be an actual person.

Shadow is doing his best to figure out how to be 'good.' He does not believe he can be a good person, he has no inclination to be good for the sake of good, but because there are people who he loves with everything inside him. It also gives him the opinion love is not solely a good or evil thing, which is probably why he can feel it so intensely. He loves his owner (and Vio is his favorite), and he loves Zelda. And when he could help them, he was happy. He wants them to be happy with him, proud of him, want them to think well of him. And since both his owner and Zelda are extremely good people, he has to be at least a decent person. In case he ever gets to meet them again.

The results vary. It helps his strengths were to emotionally hurt people, so he can figure out how to Not Do That. He knows how to act like a royal guard, so he'll do that as a default because at least fighting to protect people is easy to do. He is patient, he observes people, and absorbs information like a sponge, and uses what he learns to try and figure out who he needs to be.

That being said, if pushed enough, Shadow will become a bad person, and the only regret he'll feel is that the incident might come back to someone whose approval he cares about. The only time he feels guilt is if he hurts someone he cares about. He has no issues about lying and manipulating, he's a good actor when he wishes to be, and he can be extremely blunt and harsh with people. And when he wants to hurt someone, he is sadistic. Emotional hurt, physical hurt, its all on the table.

Shadow hates to be demeaned, or to be rejected by people he's invested in. He usually chooses to hold most at arm's length because he knows the quickest ways to enrage him are those things and Shadow mostly only keeps his anger in check by simply Not Being Invested. Its hard for him to keep control if he gets too angry or depressed, resulting in either lashing out or leaving. For all he can be arrogant, he is also incredibly insecure in being worth something.

As a general demeanor, Shadow is either disinterested, or a snarky little gremlin. He may be trying to be good, but he doesn't have to be polite, so teasing people, pranking them, laughing in their face, its all fair game and is pretty good at masking any other feelings he wants to keep a lid on.

Most importantly, Shadow values trust and loyalty. If someone has Shadow's loyalty, he will do literally anything for them. Someone stabs him in the back? Well, he either despairs to the point of wanting to disappear, or he tries to murder them. He has enough insecurities and self awareness to know there may be a legitimate reason to betray him, but he also has rage, so it depends on the situation if the destruction is inward or outward.

CRAU developments: Shadow ended up in Nautilus and he met the great-great-grandsomething of his owner and Zelda in another Link and Princess Zelda (Ocarina of Time.) Instantly, he knew there was Something There as he felt the draw of similar souls, being a weird soul creature himself. Over time, they figured out the legends of the hero being reborn is Probably An Actual Thing. Most importantly though, it made two people Shadow instantly wanted to be close to. Not as intensely as the ones from his time, but it was there, enough to strengthen his resolve to Be Better.

He also lied to them for months about who he was, claiming to be his Link's cousin. Zelda knew he was lying through his teeth, though not why, but most everyone else believed it, notably Link and Clef, Link's adoptive father. While it was easy to allow himself to be drawn closer to Link and Zelda, it was harder to let others in. After all, Shadow wants to be acknowledged and seen, but he was terrified of rejection from those who were Important. This conflict was not made easier by Clef, who kept on insisting he'd adopt Shadow to, leading to a number of fights.

Until one day, Link, Zelda, and Clef were corrupted by a dark entity Endos, and tried to destroy the gates of Nautilus. It was an emotional alteration, however, not full control, and Shadow knew the best way to take out Link, Zelda, and potentially Clef, was to kidnap Zelda. He knew if Link had even the tiniest bit of a will, he would go to Zelda, and hopefully that was enough to draw in Clef. Unfortunately, he had to sell the threat. Link would not come if he thought Shadow was just taking Zelda out of a simple misunderstanding.

So he admitted the truth in an overdramatic fashion, made himself a threat, and was able to pull them away and protect the gate. And as soon as Endos was defeated, he ran. For weeks.

But eventually the three of them found Shadow, not rejecting him, but wanting to work things out with him. And Shadow tried to drive them away, explained everything he did as a villain, but they would not leave, not believing there wasn't more to the story. Until finally....he admitted the end. Why he did what he did, and destroying the Dark Mirror.

And they chose to accept him anyway.

From there, it was easier for Shadow to relax, and let people in. He didn't advertise he was a former villain, but he was less concerned with maintaining his lies. He would bond with people over books and plans to make things better in Nautilus and fight by people's sides. He'd join in kid group outings. He wouldn't say he was close with anyone, but he was starting to care a little bit and that was huge for him.

He never accepted Clef as a father, he didn't feel he needed one, and he didn't feel emotionally ready to allow others in that deep yet. But he did accept him as a friend, despite how Clef had a tendency to drive him up the wall by misunderstanding things. The greatest irony Shadow found in Nautilus was out of the four of Link's found family, HE was the one who was willing to actually deal with emotions in a somewhat productive way.

Considering how much he had to monitor his own emotions, understand his own reactions to maintain control, it made sense, but it did also make him want to bash his head into a wall. While he was terrible to argue with, he was actually a fantastic mediator. Mostly because he could see why people were getting upset and riled and knew how to head it off to actually talk.

Nautilus taught him a lot about how to actually interact with people in a normal way, how to have a family, and how to start to let people in.

Key themes: Loneliness can make a person do incredibly terrible things. But even at a person's worst, its possible to be a hero with a little belief.

Main Motivation: He wants to be acknowledged and valued. Especially by his owner (Link) and his owner's best friend (Zelda).

Skills:
He is, technically, trained as a royal knight. He can expertly use swords, bows, shields, hammers, boomerangs, and probably hookshots and bombs as all Links do.

He is incredibly manipulative. He's also pretty good at reading people for their negative feelings and is an excellent body language reader.

He is a shadow creature. He can turn into a shadow, go intangible, go through any gap that light can get through, and move his form like a flickering shadow. He can turn others into shadow and pull them through at a temporarily accelerated speed though this is very hard to do. Things like gravity, and being made of physical matter are kind of vague concepts, so he can be as light as a feather, follow cartoon physics, and float, though his fly speed while fully formed is only as fast as he could run. Normal weapons can't injure him and he doesn't have things like organs or blood. He does need to sleep though.

He is a shapeshifter. His clothes are part of his body and generally move, he can alter his coloring, and change his form, though anything 'Link-shaped' is easiest. This also allows him to summon a sword and shield from nothing and disappear them again.

He can use dark magic. He can send a blast of dark energy and he's used mind control spells and banished people into being shadows themselves, both the latter two are difficult to maintain.

Light magic and normal light are NOT especially harmful to him. Light magic meant to harm will do so, but he won't be harmed being in the presence of just any light. It will, however, make it hard to impossible for him to use his shadow or dark abilities and tire him out with extended exposure.

In Nautilus, Shadow learned the skill of Bending. Using force of will to bend the world around him, such as creating things from nothing and altering himself. It actually is used to expanded his canon shapeshifting abilities. There are times Shadow is great at it. Other times where he's bad at it. Such is being a weird emotion creature who is sometimes full of himself and sometimes thinks he's terrible.

Item: Can he have his dragon turn into a medium sized dog? Otherwise it'd be a carved wooden dragon he got as a present from Link.

Sample: Top thread is great for Shadow being a brat, second thread is him remembering the truth and having his own Very Complicated Emotions at everything.

Notes: