[center][color=darkgreen][h3]Linkle[/h3][/color]

[color=darkgreen][b] Level 4[/b][/color] - (6/40) + 2 

[color=darkgreen][b]Location:[/b][/color] Peace's Castle, Yard

[color=darkgreen][b]Word Count: 1,189 [/b][/color][/center]

[@thedman][@Lugubrious]
[hr]

Linkle squealed in delight as Peach just gave up the milk, totally for free. She shouln't have expected otherwise, such nobility of spirit was inherent to a true princess. "Thank you your majesty." She said, running over to pick it up. As she ran she felt a quick few pinches on the side of her neck and slowed to a jog. She looked down slightly dishearten at the somehow jagged bowstring that crossed her chest, part of which occasionally scraped across her neck. That was an annoying problem, but not as annoying as what she realized when she reached her destination.

[hr]

Last night, before falling asleep to the noise of the loud synchronized breathing of both of the Bowser's lying in the throne room just beyond her makeshift bed, she had decided to finish out the day with a bang. Or, at least, a pop. One by one she had smashed the spirits of the monsters she had slain, and had accumulated quite a collection of stuff to replace the hood she'd seen Junior using as a blanket.

[hider=Linkle Acquires]

[url=https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/minecraft_gamepedia/6/65/Bow.png]Skeleton Bow[/url] an angular wooden bow that takes a second and some strength by even a practiced hand to draw. Arrows fired by it fly without any regard to wind deviation. Even normal use of the bow will result in its destruction after a while

[url=https://www.canteach.ca/minecraft-pe/images/arrow.gif]Simple Arrow[/url] x4 – an angular and primitive but functional arrow. It itself has no special properties, but after getting a hold of one, its owner is able to make additional identical arrows by combining a piece of flint on top of a stick on top of a feather, which immediately become a finished arrow with no further preparation required

[url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/crack-pack/images/9/9e/Creeper_heart_image.png/revision/latest?cb=20141125212435]Creeper Heart[/url] – an organ filled with volatile chemicals. Rupturing it will cause a strong explosion, but careful extraction could yield those very useful chemicals. Eating it is not recommended

[url=https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/minecraft_gamepedia/a/ae/Gunpowder.png]Gunpowder[/url] x2 – fine chemical grounds that detonate if exposed to fire or electricity. A useful reagent for crafting things

[url=https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/darksouls/images/9/9b/Spider_Shield_%28DSIII%29.png/revision/latest?cb=20160613075528]Spider Shield[/url] – a shield belonging to savage mountain bandits. Grants resistance to poison

[/hider]

Everything was odd! She recognized the bow and arrows instantly from the few close calls she'd had with the skeletons, but seeing them up close it was a wonder that they flew at all. Linkle was no expert bowman (she'd stumbled upon a bow she could use during her travels but hadn't been able to do any flashy combos with it) but she was pretty sure arrows needed to be sleek to fly true and bowstrings weren't meant to look like they'd been whittled out of wood. Yet it worked, she'd fired one of the arrows at the far wall that night and the thing flew true and tinked off.

There were a pair of weird looking...at first she'd thought they were burnt cookies but they didn't taste anything like burnt cookies! They tasted like sand. Well, no, not sand exactly, but in her mouth it had felt like some kind of powder. She wasn't sure what they were for, except maybe watching them float in midair when you put them down. They'd come from the spirit of one of the hissing exploding green things, along with what Linkle had just started thinking of ominously as [b]The Organ[/b]. It was like a cookie too, except it squished when you squeezed it and felt just like holding cooked meat. It smelled like the black cookies, and when you squeezed it had enough it started to [i]Hissssssss[/i] like the monsters had before they detonated. She'd stopped squeezing it quite so hard after that.

The last thing was so weird simply for how normal it was. It was a shield that, unsurprisingly giving the design on the front, had come from one of the spiders. It was regular wood, not flat or jagged at all, and sat on the floor like it was supposed to when you put it down. 

A weird haul, but not overall a bad one. The hero was expected to have a bow and shield, after all.

The thought that the hero was also expected to have a sword to go with that shield fluttered through her mind for a moment before being violently purged. She'd blow up that bridge when she came to it.

That morning when getting dressed Linkle slid her black cookies and jagged arrows into her waistband alongside the Bwah Blaster, but was at a loss with what to do with [b]The Organ[/b] which she really wasn't keen on accidentally sitting on. She was pretty sure of what would happen if it took a blow, so anywhere she was liable to her hit was out. Finally she decided to stick it behind her ear like a pencil, where it unexpectedly sat snugly and was likely to get knocked loose and away instead of taking a direct attack and violently blowing her to pieces. Plus this way is just kind of looked like a hair clip. A squishy, uncomfortably moist hair clip.

The shield had been easy. Since it was an ordinary shield all she had to do was stick it to her back and it just stayed there, defying gravity in a completely ordinary way and allowing her to quickly retrieve it if the need arose. The bow she placed over that.

She admired her image in the washroom mirror for a moment. With all this equipment she was starting to really resemble the hero of the legend.

[hr]

But now there was more stuff, she realized. Stuff that wasn't flat or just adhered to you. She had already carrying the pokeballs Mr. Stone had given her, and now she had to find a place to put the milk. The balls she shoved into her boots, alongside the crossbows that were hanging there, and the milk she shoved into the rapidly diminishing space of her waistband. 

All this figuring out what goes where, how did heroes do this? The legends always said they carried all this different equipment, but all that was ever mentioned for how was bags and bottles and as she'd just learned you had to carry the bottles too. There was never any mention of a magic sack or backpack where they put everything. She shook her head. It was just one more thing she had to learn on her quest.

Speaking of learning, right nearby Michael, Franklin, and Ratchet had been drawn to the estranged looking thing that had popped out of the box, and the cat man was explaining what it was to them. "Wow Michael, you haven't seen that type of gun before?" She said, genuinely surprised. He'd spoken so authoritatively when he'd explained how they worked to her, so this evoked the same semi-uncomfortable feeling of seeing your teacher get schooled. 

Before she could say anything else she heard Bowser yell his warning. There were enemies in the road ahead, rising around in cars. She wasn't sure what a car was, but it sounded like it was something like a cart. Did that mean they could keep up with them? She thought maybe she could drive one of those carts, but fighting on one? 

She looked over to Franklin. He'd joined them last night, out in the scrapyard, and had worked alongside Tora and Junior while she'd fended off the monster. They hadn't talked back then, mostly on account of being too busy and tired, but actions spoke louder than words and his actions then had been saying "I sure know a lot about carts."

"Excuse me?" She asked him. "Sorry we didn't get a chance to talk. I'm Linkle, it's a pleasure to meet you. Your friend Michale taught me everything I know about guns and I was wondering...well...I've never been on a cart before, but you seem to know your way around them and I was wondering if you could show me how it works?"

She pointed over to where the horse shaped two wheeler sat on the grass. "I mean, I know Tora said it was simple but if we run into enemies on the road I don't want to mess up and fall behind. Please?"