An hour later, Ned’s phone lit up with an obnoxious yodeling ringtone. Ned scrambled and lost his balance, then gave up and answered it while laying on his back on the carpet. “Hi, Petey,” he said happily. “You on your way?” A pause. Ned sat up abruptly. “What? Again? Dude, for fuck’s sakes!” Another pause. Shizuka, Anzu and Mokuba leaned in shamelessly, trying to catch the other half of the conversation. Michelle took the opportunity to steal a donut from Mokuba. “Okay, I get it, you don’t want to bother May at work, but dude - yeah, I know - can’t you go to Mr. Stark’s? Oh, right, I forgot about the business trip-” Pause. “No you can’t come to my house or MJ’s house because we’re both at the Kaiba penthouse waiting for you to get here you idiot how did this happen again-” Michelle finished her donut and started eyeing Shizuka’s pile of pistachio fudge. “No. No you cannot just go home and patch yourself up - No it’s not okay-” Ned let out a panicked puff of air. “I’m gonna tell them. Yes I am. Shut up. I don’t care. Stay on the line or I’ll track you down and kill you myself.” He turned towards Anzu, Shizuka and Mokuba, taking in their wide eyes, and took a deep shaky breath. “Um…” “Peter is Spider-Man,” Michelle said through a mouthful of fudge. “What?!” “Eh?!” “Holy shit!” “Michelle,” Ned groaned. “Um. Yeah. Okay.” He paused to gather himself. “Peter’s Spider-Man and he kind of got stabbed and he has nowhere to go and if he goes to a hospital he’ll get ratted out to SHIELD and they’ll probably do creepy experiments on him and stuff so is it okay if he comes here and we try to stop him from bleeding to death,” he said all in one breath. “Okay,” said Shizuka. “Woah,” said Mokuba. “Peter blew up our apartment,” said Anzu.

Anzu opens the door, takes one look at him, and then slams it in his face. “Mazaki.” Seto knocks rapidly and repeatedly, the terse rhythm of pent-up panic starting to release itself. “Mazaki. Give me two minutes of your time.” “You get no minutes of my time, you disgusting asshole!” Anzu hollers from the other side of the door. “Anzu,” Seto repeats. The knocking is turning into pounding. “I’m not leaving.” “I’m calling the police!” “Go ahead, and I’ll keep knocking until they get here!” “Aaaaargh,” Anzu growls in frustration, and opens the door a crack. “What the fuck do you want, Kaiba?” Seto notices with a pang that she doesn’t call him Kaiba-kun anymore, but he supposes he deserves it.

You know when you can feel something starting to percolate in your brain - something stupid - bad news - not a good idea - horrible - but there’s nothing you can do other than just trying to hammer it back down every time it pops up, like some kind of incredibly frustrating whack-a-mole game where the only prize is not ruining your own life? Yeah. Honda Hiroto was in the blissful beginning stages of one such whack-a-mole game, the bit where you have no idea there are any moles at all, but later you’d look back and be able to pinpoint exactly where things started going to hell on a one-way bus. Quite literally on a bus. A private tour bus travelling through the Canadian Rockies.

“Look,” Tony says, gesturing across his property. “This is the picture of domestic fucking bliss. Garden, two kids, shithead alpaca, porch to sit on and reflect on my dawning old age. Why the hell would I want to go back to climbing into a tin can and letting enhanced fuckfaces smack me around.” It’s a rhetorical question, so he states it, rather than asking. It doesn’t matter. Natasha has never once in her life grasped the concept of a rhetorical question, because she thinks she knows everything. Natasha shrugs. “I’m just saying, there’s maybe a middle ground between full-time Iron Man and removing yourself entirely from society by fucking off to the middle of nowhere and only showing your face in the city twice a year for Stark Industries shareholder meetings.” “I don’t even show up for those anymore,” Tony cackles. “I do ‘em remotely, and then when I’ve had enough I can just say the internet out here sucks and fake my connection breaking up.” “That doesn’t work as well as you think it does. Anyways, that’s not the point.” “The point, then, Romanoff,” Tony says, making little walking motions with his fingers. “Get to it.”

“I can’t believe you’re willing eat plain ostrich legs roasted on a fire, but not the barbequed ones with the delicious dry-rub Link invented,” Anzu was saying to Kaiba. Kaiba huffed. “What’s confusing about that? Jounouchi just killed this one. It hasn’t been sitting out on a filthy rock in the open air growing bacteria for god knows how long.” The familiar bantering and bickering was sort of soothing, in a way. Even in a confusing and highly disorienting world where Honda Hiroto could suddenly use ancestral Goron magic, at least he could count on the unwavering constant of Kaiba choosing random nitpicky hills to die on. Jounouchi was sitting beside Honda, and was currently engaged in a spirited conversation with Yuugi about different ways they could season the ostrich next time, even though they didn’t have all the ingredients for Link and Aji’s dry rub. While Jounouchi talked through a massive and disgusting mouthful of food, he casually put his hand on Honda’s knee. No comment, no concerned look. Just: Hey, man. I’m here and so are you. Kaiba may have been predictable, but Jounouchi Katsuya was the one thing in Honda’s life that had always been as reliable as the sun coming up every morning.

There won't be a direct connection, no, but there's absolutely a thematic connection if you look for it (and will become more apparent over the course of the story.) I.E. Yuugi being forced to examine his own beliefs about TKB as they were filtered through the lens of Atem, who was a king and never had to face the sort of poverty that drives that kind of desperation. And that would mirror Zelda's perspective on Ganondorf shifting as well, because her whole understanding of Ganondorf and Gerudo history is based on A - history books written by the victors and B - coming from an imperial family that has had a vested interest in demonizing Gerudo for millennia.

I think it's going to get more apparent over time that Atem's absence is a core thematic element of TTYE - aka breaking down the mythology you construct around someone, the way that love and grief perpetuate those mythologies, and how to learn to love someone while in the process of examining who they actually were, especially when they're no longer around and you're just left with memories you're piecing togethere. I always saw TTYE!Ganondorf as kind of like a "second chance" for both Link&Zelda and the Yuugi-tachi, a way for all of them to move past the 'good vs evil' dichotomy that lacks any nuance, and understand all the people involved in both their stories as eminently human. It's kind of like Justice for TKB!!! brought about through a very long isekai adventure ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)