Sorry for the long wait to anybody who was anticipating this! Without further ado, here’s part 1!
Hyrule wakes up and honestly takes to things pretty well. He spends his first few days in the maze poking around the glade, (the safe center of the maze).
He doesn’t know yet, but the maze is shaped like the triforce. The center, empty, triangle a safe meadow free of any mazes. It’s cut through by a river and has a few clusters of trees.
Hyrule, who doesn’t remember how he knows these things, is a good survivalist. He makes a small shelter in a small cave, really just a hole between some rocks.
The maze has three entrances. He chooses one and finally enters the maze. Things are pretty simple at first. Eventually he runs into a few small monsters which he basically just bashes with a self made spear.
After a week or so he finally runs into a ‘boss’. It’s a LARGE reptile that shoots projectiles at him. (It’s just Aquamentus for Zelda 1 fans) He manages to kill it relatively unharmed. The next day the elevator rises again. In it are some basic supplies, rope, a ration kit, and a small dagger.
Hyrule learns whenever he solves a particularly difficult puzzle or kills a particularly large monster he is rewarded.
This is pretty encouraging to him and he keeps traveling deeper and deeper into the maze, exploring it from different entrances as well. He does this for a little over a month becoming pretty adapted to the maze, getting stronger and smarter. Unfortunately he gets really hurt one day fighting a huge bird that shoots lightning strikes. He catches a strike to his left leg and retreats.
He’s left with a severe 3rd degree burn. He doesn’t know how he knows, but somehow he knows that he needs herbs that grow deep in the maze to treat it. So, cue him making a mad attempt to go get said herbs but being unable to due to his injury slowing him down.
He stops trying and starts trying to treat it in the glade but he just doesn’t have what he needs. Infection and blood loss sets in and Hyrule starts getting very sick.
Meanwhile, . . On the outside everyone, namely Legend, are starting to freak out because it really looks like Hyrule is on the path to dying a slow, fevered death.
Legend makes a huge fuss and he is next to enter the maze. It happens fast and unceremoniously. He doesn’t tell anybody or say goodbye, he urges HYLIA to get him in there as fast as they can. It’s not until he’s in the chair and going under amnesia that he starts to think about the implications of losing his memory.
When Legend enters it’s obvious he doesn’t recognize or remember Hyrule because he fully ignores him and immediately runs into the maze trying to escape.
He does this for a few more days before slowing down and talking to the other dude. He also quickly realizes that the other dude is SUPER sick.
Hyrule vaguely answers some of Legend’s questions but he barely has energy to do anything but sleep. Guilt and panic engulfs Legend and he starts trying to help. Hyrule’s wound smells awful.
Hyrule tells Legend about the herb he needs and Legend works tirelessly until he gets it. (It’s basically nature's antibiotic).
Their friendship reblossoms as Legend starts nursing him back to health.
On the Zelda side:
HYLIA is surprised when Artemis doesn’t assimilate all too well. She panics upon awakening and spends her entire first week hiding in one spot. Eventually hunger drives her out and she calms down after foraging a meal.
It takes her another week until she even considers going in the maze. She doesn’t explore it thoroughly. Her first monster sends her fleeing back to the safety of the glade.
Eventually she gets a little bit more courageous in the safer parts of the maze. Upon completing a semi difficult puzzle, HYLIA sends her a care package very similar to the one they sent Hyrule. Unlike Hyrule, this care package does not have the safe influence.
Artemis quickly pieces it together that she’s here because of a greater power and that when she does tasks that it deems favorable she gets rewarded. So she refuses to reenter the maze in order to see how far she can push that force. She wants answers or nothing at all.
So Artemis starts chilling. She starts building herself a base. She starts seeing what food she can cultivate inside the glade itself.
After a month of Artemis basically doing jackshit HYLIA gets frustrated. They send in Dawn.
Dawn and Artemis have never gotten along. They never actually had a real fight before, not like Legend and Wars, but it’s always been a known thing that they do NOT like each other.
Dawn has also always been more aggressive and headstrong so they think she will shake things up. Dawn has also been causing issues since Hyrule, who she was close with, got sent in so it’ll be good to get her off their plates.
Dawn adjusts well to being sent in and Artemis hesitantly greets her. It’s obvious that the memory erasure works well because they have no recollection of each other and begin to get along with each other well.
Artemis settles in Dawn giving her a tour of the glade. When Dawn asks about the maze entrances Artemis tenses up and tells her about her theory. She shows her the gifts that were sent after she completed a puzzle. She asks Dawn not to go in…
And Dawn agrees. She thinks it’s a worthy theory to test and the glade provides enough.
So for almost another month Dawn and Artemis live a happy, cottagecore, life in the glade.
HYLIA unceremoniously sends in Aurora who’s always been stubborn. It works.
Shortly after welcoming her in, Aurora points at the maze and asks about it. Artemis and Dawn explain about why their avoiding it and Aurora just basically goes: Okay well I’m not doing that.
And they can’t stop her. After Aurora starts running the maze Dawn begins to follow bc it doesn’t really matter anymore and eventually Artemis is just: “fuk u guys.” And starts running it too.
As always pls lmk what you guys think!
I’m not sure how to communicate the next parts very well bc as of up to this point a lot of this AU was more concept and less story but it’s kind of been evolving into a story. I don’t think I have enough plot, or energy, to write an actual fic so I hope this will suffice. I’m gonna try and do this thru bullet points.
I also wanna say that I’m super open to suggestions. If there’s ever stuff you’d rather hear about lmk. I’m always SUPER happy to talk
So here we go:
The beginning:
The maze is announced and almost everybody protests it. Very simply, this is inhumane. Like obviously so. People who aren’t immediately against it are relieved. They’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop for years.
Warriors is probably the only person who isn’t against it from the get go. He’s one of the only people, Artemis being the only other, that’s been raised in HYLIA since birth. He thinks that he understands what they do, that the maze is for the greater good of humanity. He agrees that there is no better way to study their bodies and brain waves than in a raw experiment that strips everything from its participants. That isn’t to say that he isn’t empathetic to his fellow participants (probably not a great term to call them). He understands the fear they must be feeling, but he knows that they’ll forget everything. The maze will soon be all they know. Maybe… it can actually become home.
Little Warriors characterization: He doesn’t know it here but he’s starting to resent being used as the golden boy, being pushed into a “captain” role, by HYLIA. He sees the easy friendship the others have with each other that he will never have due to the role HYLIA has put him in. They’ll never feel safe around Wars. He pines for a home that he’s never known.
Some of them also believe HYLIA when they’re told this is for the best of society. That being said, just because they believe that the ends will justify the means BUT they question why they don’t have a choice in this.
Legend is the first, and loudest, to object to this project completely. He questions how watching a bunch of amnesiacs will create vaccinations against the gloom and genetic resistance to mind controlling frequencies. No matter how much they explain he gets louder and angrier. It doesn’t help that his sister, Fable, is also protesting albeit a lot more clinically, picking it apart with her questions. This creates quite the stir in the group.
Things get worse when HYLIA explains that there’s not just 1 maze, but 2 and that they’ll be separated by sex. Girls on one side, boys on the other. This feels like a way to divide and conquer.
HYLIA lets the groups sit on this for a little under a week before they announce who’s going in the maze first. On the girls side Artemis will be going first.
Artemis was not originally selected to go first. She managed to figure out that HYLIA initially selected Fable to go first. Artemis is like Warriors in the sense that HYLIA used her as the golden child but for the girls wing. Unlike Warriors, Artemis is really good at being a bit manipulative back at HYLIA without repercussions. She manages to convince them to let her go first. This seems to everyone like her taking charge, being a good leader, etc. She’s the only one who knows that she’s doing this because she’s terrified. She doesn’t want to lay in wait, watching as her friends lose their memories, get hurt, possibly die.
As for the boys… it’s announced that Hyrule will be going first (in less than 24 hours mind you). Legend reacts to this more poorly than Hyrule does. Honestly, Hyrule doesn’t even get a chance to process before Legend is up out of his seat yelling. He’s desperate to defend his best friend.
This incites a small riot as Dawn and Aurora step in too. Dawn has been itching for a fight for months so this is easy. Soon half the entire group is trying to wrestle HYLIA operatives while the rest just watch, half heartedly try and stop the others, or sit in dread.
The riot is stopped before it can really get started when the main offenders get sedated.
Artemis and Hyrule are separated from the rest. HYLIA decides to send them in right away to avoid more confrontation.
Artemis is sent in alone and she’s glad for that. (She’s really not but she wouldn’t admit that to the others). That way nobody will see how scared she is.
Hyrule is also scared. They have him on a table and are getting ready to sedate him before they wipe his memory. They allow one visitor to come in. It’s Wild. Hyrule is relieved to have somebody with him but it’s obvious that he wishes Legend were there, his brother. Wild isn’t offended and does his best to be there for him. Even after Hyrule is unconscious he stays. He wonders if this is what it was like for Twilight. He vows to be with Hyrule soon. He kisses his forehead before he’s forced to leave.
And then, the first people are released in the maze.
I have issues with articulation so if anything is confusing pls lmk 🙏 Also if there’s plot holes or anything stupid, or if something could’ve just been better LMK. I will not get offended
ty for reading 💕💕💕 More to come
in the series a lot of people die and it’s pretty meaningful. I’m also a fan of whump and let’s be honest. DRAMA. So that being said, I think it would keep things spicy. But. I won’t do it if everyone is strongly opposed.
alright! Here are the backstories to the main guys in my maze runner AU! This is before they’re put in the maze. I’m sorry it’s so long, I was gonna write even more but I think that would turn it into a behemoth 😭
here’s a short chart of everyone’s ages and age that they entered HYLIA
Age lineup
First is age taken. Second is their current age. The timeline in years is also included (being the year of the age they were taken. They all enter the maze in year XX86)
Warriors: 0yo* - 21yo XX65
Time: 11yo - 23yo XX74
Legend: 7yo - 18yo XX75
Hyrule: 9yo - 17yo XX78
Four*: 8yo - 16yo XX78
Sky: 12yo - 19yo XX79
Twilight: 13yo - 19yo XX80
Wild: 11yo - 17yo XX80
Wind: 10yo - 14yo XX82
and here’s the backstories!
Warriors: Warriors was raised in HYLIA. His parents worked there and had him tested shortly after he was born for resistances to gloom and mind control technology. He tests very well, sliding into that <1% of the population that has significant resistance to the building apocalypse. He won’t know this until he’s an adult, but his resistances aren’t natural. He’s one of the first to be the product of genetic engineering, also one of the only successful cases. From a young age he’s trained in leadership classes and in other courses. When he’s 9 he’s told that a new program will run soon with other children like him and that it’s his responsibility to lead and represent them. The first kid in the program is time, who’s just a little bit older than Wars is. He doesn’t really care about how bossy Wars is, he kind of just goes along with whatever he wants. Wars is secretly happy to have a friend who isn’t Artemis, another kid like him who will lead any girls who enter HYLIA. Things are good until LEGEND comes along. Legend is the first person he meets who opposes HYLIA and isn’t there by choice. So he tries to steer him in the right direction but it goes poorly. It’s not much better when Hyrule comes along bc Legend immediately attaches himself to the kid. It goes on like that, and after a while Warriors finds that he’s not actually friends with any of the other boys except for Time and maybe Wind but that’s embarrassing bc Wind is a child. HYLIA uses Wars as the golden child of the group which he takes a lot of pride in. Deep down he really wishes they didn’t so that maybe he could join in on the easy comradery that the other boys have. When HYLIA tells Wars about the maze he agrees that it’s for the best. There is (seemingly) no other way to grab such important, and life saving data, as this. Hyrule being sent in first is kind of a traumatizing event for everybody but he doesn’t let it shake his resolve. After watching the maze for months, he finds himself questioning HYLIA’s methods. As soon as he voices his concerns, he’s sent into the maze.
Time: (I wanna thank @pepperpuppy417 for this one, a suggestion of theirs really helped!) Time grew up in a foster home out in the boonies of Hyrule. He grew up very happy in the countryside of Hyrule and lived in nature. Unfortunately when he was a kid the cult released a new variant of the gloom in the forest by the small town he lived in. This variant had the ability to spread not just to Hylians, but to flora and fauna as well. Soon his entire village gets sick, him included. When the Hylian royal army comes he overhears some dignitaries talking about burning down the entire village and forest deeming it a lost cause. He tells his foster father who tells him to run, so he does. He escapes the army but he bumps into a stranger right away. He’s too sick to run by this point, but the stranger treats his gloom sickness and miraculously he makes a recovery. He starts traveling with this stranger for two years. He never gets any name to call him except for Fierce. Their time starts coming to an end when Fierce starts dying due to a brain tumor. He asks if he can give Time a gift. A selfish one. Time accepts and Fierce implants a microchip into the top of his spine. He tells Time that when he needs to use it, he’ll know. Time doesn’t know what this means for a long time. He and Fierce get apprehended by Hyrulean guards. They find that Time has significant resistance to both gloom and mind controlling tech. He’s surprised because he didn’t used to be but says nothing. He’s sent to HYLIA and never sees Fierce again. He doesn’t trust them from the get go but goes with it. He likes Warriors, despite thinking he’s a bit brainwashed, but he senses a very earnest, kind person in him. Even if he’s neurotic. He becomes a bit of a big brother to all of the other boys in his ward. Time is always calm, he has a lot of humility. Time is biding his time, waiting for revenge, for his time. (Geez how many times can I say time??) Everyone is surprised when he reacts poorly to the idea of the maze. He’s been very compliant with Hylia up until now. He starts getting more and more vocal about how it isn’t right. They send him in shortly after Legend.
Hyrule: Was found as a homeless child in a “cult town”. Cult towns are towns with a lot of the mind controlling technology around so that everyone in it is at the whims and wills of the cult. Hyrule, and Dawn and Aurora, were kids in that town that somehow didn’t get affected by the technologies. When the kingdom of Hyrule was finally able to overthrow that town, they sent Hyrule, and the girls, to HYLIA. He has the best resistance to the mind control out of anybody in the chain, but he has no resistance to the gloom. He and Legend have been like brothers since meeting. Legend took Hyrule under his wing because he wasn’t allowed to stay in the girls wing with people he already knew. He’s super grateful to Legend and looks up to him. Hyrule considers Wild to be his best friend. Hyrule was one of the people trusted to keep an eye on Wild when he was introduced to the group bc they knew any lingering effects of the mind control wouldn’t hurt him. Hyrule is sent into the maze first due to his high marks in survival courses, good attitude in high stress scenarios, and because they were slightly okay with him dying. They sent a person with the very good odds of being able to survive alone but also a person who wouldn’t be a total loss if they were to die. His lack of resistance to gloom is what sealed his fate. They’ll be able to go full out with the mind controlling technology when it’s just Hyrule in there but many of the others have good resistance to it as well. What Hyrule doesn’t have is gloom resistance, something they also really want to look into. It was between him and Wild. He, and the chain, were only told a day before he would be sent in. Legend freaked out so badly that he had to be sedated. He wasn’t able to say goodbye before Hyrule was sent in.
Legend: Legend grew up with his uncle away from his father due to family drama surrounding Legend’s birth. (His father cheated on his wife and Legend was born out of it.) Legend’s uncle contracts the gloom and sends him to his father before he dies. Legend's father freaks out bc Legend has to be infected after living with somebody who had the gloom for months. Miraculously he doesn’t, so they have him tested and he’s just about immune. His sister is as well. Legend's family sends him and his sister to HYLIA where they both grow extremely resentful of their family and of HYLIA. Legend hated those early days. The only other people were Wars and Time and they wouldn’t spend much time with him. He and Wars also constantly butted heads. He was so lonely. When Hyrule comes, Legend attaches himself to him and makes sure Hyrule isn’t alone like he was. Legend is horrified when Hyrule is going to be sent into that place alone so he protests. Too hard. He wakes up in the med wing horrified when he realizes they didn’t let him say goodbye. He’s constantly monitoring Hyrule. You can’t pull him from the screen. When Hyrule gets hurt, Legend begs to be sent in. It takes two weeks but they finally relent and then Legend is officially the second person to be let in.
(The Four): So I decided to split Four into the colors, I feel like the maze needed more people bc it was kinda sparse and then I realized that Four can literally be 4 people. So Vio, Red, Green, and Blue are all half brothers. Their father, a captain to the royal guard, had a four month break one year and in that time he decided to have a bit of a ho phase. Later that winter a woman appeared at his house and begged him to take custody of their child. He agreed, being more well off than her and welcomed Vio into his home. To his shock, the same thing happens 3 MORE TIMES THAT WINTER. Obviously he gets dna tests and yup. All four are his. His father helps raise them, honestly does most of the job since the captain is very busy with work. The colors live very happily with their grandfather until a mind control machine is dropped into their village.. everyone in the town but the boys get messed up from it, going fits or dissociative states. He sends the colors to live with their father again. The captain is shocked that none of the boys are hurt. They get tested and lo and behold, they have a good amount of resistance to the mind control machines. Their father sends them to Hylia thinking it will be a really good opportunity for them to get better schooling. The colors do pretty well, they all have each other at the end of the day. The one issue is that they get RELENTLESSLY bullied by another kid named Shadow. Shadow got in just before they did and is of a similar age. Eventually Vio befriends him and they all find out that he’s just insecure yadda-yadda. Shadow is a weird case because he has no resistance to gloom or mind control, but was infected by gloom until he reached a stage 3 state and somehow recovered which was thought to be impossible. He’s involved in different testings than the chain. The colors and shadow all grow really close, Vio and him even becoming boyfriends. When they get sent to the maze, Shadow copes poorly.
Sky: I feel bad. For Sky I’ve had the most trouble with his backstory, (dw, I’ve got plans for him when he’s actually in the maze), so I apologize to his fans. Sky grew up pretty upper class basically in the royal family being born to a very high ranking royal guard. He was being trained to be Sun’s personal guard. When they’re both 12 they go through regular preteen checkups and the royal family is incredibly relieved that the heiress and her guard have substantial resistances to both gloom and the mind controlling technology that’s terrorizing Hyrule. To further keep them safe from an increasingly angry public and worsening political atmosphere they’re both sent to Hylia where they can get fantastic educations while keeping them out of the public eye. Sky keeps quiet about where he’s come from because he quickly realizes that a lot of these kids are not as fortunate as he is. He also quickly realizes that he’s treated a little bit differently than the rest of the kids. Some of them get physical training, a lot of them choose self defense courses. Sky does too, wanting to keep on top of his training. He quickly realizes that while their trainers are okay with occasionally injuring say Time or Hyrule, or honestly any of the other boys and girls, he’s never come out with anything worse than a bruise. He makes the choice to be the nice kid, the one who won’t start beef or trouble because this place is VERY troubling. Before he can really figure out what’s wrong and how he can fix it, the maze is launched and that solidifies his worries. This place isn’t what it says it is. They tolerate it when he’s caught sending messages to the royal family about his worries but they swiftly react when they find out he’s been trying to send messages to outside friends as well. They send Sun into the maze which basically sends Sky into a rage nobody ever predicted possible from the gentle guy. They sedate him and when he next wakes, it’s in the maze.
Twilight and Wild: These two have a story that is too intertwined to not tell together. They both grew up in the same orphanage. They had always been closer with each other over the other children and considered themselves to be brothers. The cult launches a mind control machine in their town and it lands on the outskirts. It doesn’t immediately plunge the town into a subservient dissociative state but everyone starts suffering from severe migraines and some start to struggle with seizures. Nobody can move it because the waves get stronger the closer one moves towards it. Wild doesn’t like what the technology is doing, he thinks it’s mean. Twilight listens to him complain about it but he tries to tell him that the Hyrule Royal Guard will send somebody to deal with it soon. Nobody comes and people start dying or dipping into the aforementioned dissociative states. Twilight wakes up to find Wild gone. Twi is panicked and runs after Wild to find him heading towards the mind controller. Wild manages to destroy it by the time Twilight catches up. He finds Wild unconscious bleeding from his nose and mouth, barely alive. Twilight doesn’t notice that he himself only has a small headache from standing so close to the machine. He drags him back to town desperately trying to find help. Wild wakes up, but it’s with little cognitive function. He can’t eat by himself, he can’t bathe himself, he can’t speak. Twilight is devastated, feeling deeply as if he failed to protect him. Only after the mind controller is destroyed does the government send anybody to the town. Twilight immediately hates them. He hates that he ever thought they could help. To his horror, he realizes that they might be able to now. He swallows his pride and asks one, who he doesn’t realize is a HYLIA representative, if they can fix his brother. They listen to his story and test Twilight to see if he’s mind control resistant. He is. They agree to help him if he agrees to join their program. Of course he does. While they fix Wild they discover that he’s incredibly resistant to gloom. It’s probably the reason they let him live. When Wild wakes up from surgery he can’t remember anything. Not even Twilight. Twilight is willing to rebuild his relationship with Wild, but there’s a deep anger boiling within him. He doesn’t think Wild’s loss of memory was a side effect. When the maze is proposed Wild is one of the first people willing to go in. Twilight does everything in his power to stop this.
Wind: Wind and his little sister are raised in a small beach town that’s pretty protected from the rest of Hyrule. Things are peaceful for a long time until, of course, they’re not. The gloom has spread to the waters near his small fishing town and people start getting sick fast. His grandmother becomes very ill from the gloom and it turns from her looking out for Wind and Aryll to them looking out for her. Wind, despite barely being 10, knows he has to do something and fast. Regular people can barely survive the gloom. A woman of her age makes the odds so much worse. He sets out to find somebody who can work and finds a government camp nearby who are probably there to stop the gloom from spreading into major waterways. He begs for an antidote and they take interest. Wind and Aryll have been closely exposed to their infected grandmother for days, maybe weeks, and show no signs themselves. They agree to help but will need a favor in return. They treat granny and tell Wind and Aryll there’s a place they can go where they can help everyone. Granny greatly encourages them, she believes it will be safer for them there rather than out here. So Wind and Aryll go to HYLIA, the last people to arrive. The older kids dote on them, even though Wind doesn’t think he needs it. He and Aryll also, unfortunately, kind of become a mechanism of control for the “rowdy” older kids. When something goes wrong or somebody acts up, HYLIA is not afraid to put either Wind or Aryll in the way. When the maze opens and many people begin voicing their discontent, Wind is sent in as a message to the other boys.
anywho!!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE LMK ANY THOUGHTS! I have a lot more info in my head but I think it would be confusing or too complicated to write it all out 😭 so if you wanna know more about anything or anyone pls know I am always so so happy to chat!!!
Gloom and Mind Controlling Technology:
I mentioned that HYLIA is trying to fight off and end the growing control of another group called the Cult of Demise. The cult has weaponized a virus that evolves too quickly to make a vaccine. The cult also uses mind controlling technology that requires very expensive technology to combat. These roadblocks are why HYLIA is so interested in less than 1% of the new generation of children and young adults who have significant resistance, and in some cases full immunity, to either the gloom, mind controlling technology, or even both.
So
Here’s quick explanation about how the gloom and mind controlling technology works:
The gloom is a highly infective virus that wears down the body typically over the course of 2 months. The gloom is highly infectious and has begun to spread into flora and fauna in some regions (this is speculated to be genetic engineering done by Demise). It tends to advance in 3 stages. The first one lasts the longest, about a month. During this time the person afflicted will find themself weakening at a rapid pace, being prone to cold like symptoms, severe migraines, and nose bleeds. The second stage lasts 2-3 weeks on average, the person will rapidly deteriorate and experience changes in personality such as aggression, severe depression that is rapidly onset, and dread. The last and final stage is short, a week at the longest. The person enters a zombie-like frenzy, often being physically aggressive whilst showing signs of memory loss. Then they die. The first stage is curable, with a 70% success rate greatly depending on age and health. The second stage is also treatable, but with much worse odds with only 30% dying. The final stage is untreatable. Keep in mind a good portion of the citizens of Hyrule cannot afford or don’t have access to treatment.
Shadow was taken in by HYLIA not because he’s resistant to the gloom, but because he had it to the point where he entered the third stage. Instead of dying, he miraculously recovered.
The mind controlling technology are usually large boxes that the cult tries to drop into convenient locations, such as small towns, Hyrule army camps, and so on. They emit electromagnetic waves that work at a frequency that disrupts the neurological functioning of Hylians. Depending on the frequency, strength, and proximity to the mind controllers (I should probably think of a cooler name for these) people experience migraines, seizures, and not too uncommonly death. The other major influence of the mind controllers is that people most often slip into a very dissociative state where they become very agreeable and unable to fight back. The cult typically uses these people as serfs. People who are rescued from these states often suffer from brain injury, the death of glial cells, memory loss, and they often demonstrate signs of early onset dementia or altheimers. We’ll see more of this with Wild
here’s a little scale I made for the chain showing how resistant they are to gloom and/or mind controlling tech (I hope it makes sense)
Gloom to Mind Control Resistance Scale
The first number is gloom. The second is mind control. Scale goes from 0 (none) to 5 (total).
Hyrule: G(0) - MC(5)
Legend: G(4) - MC(2)
Time: G(3) - MC(3)
Wind: G(4) - MC(1)
Four*: G(1) - MC(4)
Twilight: G(2) - MC(3)
Sky: G(5) - MC(2)
Warriors: G(4) - MC(3)
Wild: G(5) - MC(0)
Anywho! Please lmk any thoughts, suggestions, questions, or just if you enjoyed! <3 I really love talking
HEEHEE OKAY. Lowkey feeling a little bit old with this one but 👀👀👀
Maze Runner AU.
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like the Lu boys fit perfectly into this scenario. Like it’s just music to me.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read the books (lowkey gave up on the movies 😔), so I apologize if things are fuzzy or don’t match the book canon that well. Okay here we go:
Hyrule would be first in the maze. (I’m going by game release order). Hyrule starts exploring the maze after he gets to know the glade, but a severe accident makes him avoid it. He would be alone all by himself for almost 4 months before he’s joined by Legend. He knows the glade better than anybody. Later he becomes the group’s “med-jack” (basically just medic). He’s 17.
Legend is next. He becomes the first runner in the maze because he made SEVERAL escape attempts before Hyrule begged him to calm down before he got himself killed. He’s really good at drawing maps and becomes the map maker. He’s 18.
Time was a bit of a shock because unlike the other boys he’s an adult (23), tall, and swole. He came 2 months after Legend. The boys are really skittish around him at first, but he’s really good at building. He’s able to reach the high places they can’t so the come around.
Wind is also a surprise but because he’s young (14). He comes a month after Time. He brings a lot of energy to the group and they grow closer because of it (or at least Legend and Hyrule get a little less codependent and spend more time with other people). He’s very frustrated because he wants to help with running the maze but the others, mostly Time won’t let him. This is around the time that Time (ugh) takes his place as first in command.
Four is the first person to actually take to the maze well. The others are shocked, waiting for his crash out but it doesn’t come. He confides one night that his head doesn’t feel right, like it’s holding too much. The longer he stays the more prone to severe mood shifts. He’s 16 and takes care of building things like tools and handling small mechanisms. He came 2 weeks after Wind, having the shortest amount of time between arrivals.
Twilight is another person who doesn’t take this maze business well. He stalks off immediately into the maze. After going in and out of the maze for days, not listening to the protests of others, he comes back with awful claw marks raked across his face. He’s more inclined for teamwork after that. Wind pulls out his fun side. Twilight has a green thumb and starts domesticating the plants of the glade. He’s 19 and came 1.5 months after Four.
Sky is a nice addition. He comes 2 months after Twilight He’s the most gentle person to come up so far and is very inclined to teamwork but… Sky is drawn to the maze like a moth to a flame. Somehow he drags a very aggressive bird species from it into the glade and starts farming them. Sky is 18.
Warriors doesn’t take his arrival well, but at this point there’s already 6 people to yell at you to not run into the maze first chance possible so he doesn’t. Warriors is incredibly logical and a great planner. He doesn’t take much time to become a second in command. The whole time he’s in the maze he has a sick feeling that he recognizes it. He’s 21 and had come a month after Sky.
When Wild comes it’s a shock because he comes 5 months after Wars. Wild is the worst case of memory loss they’ve seen. Most people remember weird things like their age or even a name to go by, but Wild has nothing. He learns quick, however, and becomes the groups most fearless runner. He’s 17. Greenie.
I have more, but this would be a little too long if I wrote all the lore I have building >_<. I have a rough plot in mind and lore for them in the maze if anyone wants to hear about it
Please lmk what you think and any theories you might have!