[center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/190924/544c85ab5c75bc61a4bb5ce40dc0caa6.png[/img]
[color=salmon][u]Level[/u][/color]: [b]4[/b] - [color=salmon][u]Total EXP[/u][/color]: 3/40

[h3]&[/h3]

[color=pink][h1]Peach[/h1][/color]

[h3]&[/h3]

[color=darkgreen][h1]Linkle[/h1][/color]
[color=darkgreen][b] Level 7[/b][/color] - (5/70)

[color=salmon]Word Count[/color]: 2749 (+3 exp)

[color=salmon][b]Location:[/b][/color] Devil's Casino, Land of Adventure?[/center]

[hr]


“Blegh.”

The Cadet coughed and pinched his nose shut, his eyes watering from the heat and smoke. He definitely hadn’t been expecting this kind of arena, not paying very much attention when he’d ran in - and poor Peach! They’d definitely gotten the short end of the stick. In truth he’d been a little surprised to see her follow, but if the fight against the Brachydios proved anything it was that the princess was fearless. Besides, Cadet was more used to fighting in a group anyway!

He sized up the area as the dice hand set the top of the cigar aflame. The other ashtray was a fair distance away, but right now the hunter only had a melee weapon. He’d have to jump over to be of any real use.

“Aw, lame,” was Ace Cadet’s reply to Wheezy’s words, completely lacking in self-awareness. He dove to the opposite side of the tray as Peach when the fireballs came at them, swatting a few of the bat-things away when they swooped too close. Seemed like the range of Peach’s gun wasn’t enough, so that meant he’d definitely have to jump over. Cadet briefly judged the distance and nodded before he turned a grin toward the princess.

“No worries Ms. Peach, I can probably make it over there!” Yep, probably! He skipped backwards a few steps and took off with a running start before leaping the fiery chasm just as Linkle arrived through the portal. Cadet ended up crashing into a stray cigarette bat as he threw himself over to the other ashtray, tumbling to the ground and spitting out ashes as he got up. 

"Princess!" Linkle said, sailing through the portal on wings of cucoo. She hadn't even landed yet, seeing the door the princess was headed for from on high and gliding toward it. "I'm here to save yo-"

She didn't have any time to finish, because she flew right into an incoming fireball. It popped, the burst throwing the cucoos up as Linkle tumbled down onto her back in the ash. Not a moment later the bats were upon her, swooping in and stinging her over and over with the red hot cherrys glowing on their tips. She kicked her legs and swatted at the agile creatures before she got just a little too frustrated. Her hair flashed a sparkling blue as she shot out her open palms towards the bats, and in an instant ice began to crawl over their bodies, wrap around their wings, and form an icy blue caps on their glowing tips. The weight and the cold seemed too much for the ones she got, and they clattered to the ground, where they were set upon by the cucoos who had come to a graceful landing while Linkle was in her predicament, while the rest retreated to a safer distance to try and think of some safer plan of attack.

Linkle pushed herself out of the ash, hacking and wheezing from breathing in it and the smoke, her clothes covered in black burn holes revealing tender red welts and her hair singed from the flame wheel she'd caught. She shook herself off and reached down to help Peach up from where she was. "I came to save you guys."

Peach accepted the hand gratefully. “Thank you.” She got to her feet, looking over at Mr. Wheezy as he laughed at the Ace Cadet’s ashy landing. After a few chortles, the giant cigar started spitting fireballs again at the close-range threat, evidently not too gifted in the creativity department. The hunter shook his head clear of ash in time to narrowly duck and avoid one ball of flame, on the defensive as the girls talked.

“Although, despite this hell...hole,” Peach said, fumbling through her attempt to sound casual and crass. “It doesn’t look like that much of a fight.” So saying, she leveled her scatterblaster at the swarm of unfrozen cigarette bats and fired, destroying almost every single one of them in a single shot. More would come, but all that stood between the young women and Mr. Wheezy was a little jump and some careening fireballs. “Team jump?” Peach offered.

Linkles face lit up. "You know how to do the rabbit thing? Yes!" She hopped backward, scooping up one of the cucoos under her arm, and got into a runners start. Peach had things handled over here, so Linkle wanted to get at that big smoky guy. She ran in place for a moment, then shot toward where Peach was waiting at a dead sprint.

Back on the other side, the red haired hunter was getting pretty tired of rolling around in the soot to avoid the chaotic fire balls. With a huff he raised his shield and let one of the flames burst upon it before charging in close. This dude - if one could even call him that - was nasty, but then again it was a living cigar. Cadet bounced off Wheezy’s body and let his sword loose, easily cutting through the dried tobacco skin. 

"HYAAAA!" Came a scream from above as Linkle shot down, leg extended, landing a kick right between the cigar man's eyes. A spiderweb of ice extended from that spot as she kicked off, landing close to the Cadet. "Oh hey, it is you." She said as the cucoo that had thrown her at the height of her and Peach's team jump came fluttering down into the ash behind them. "I couldn't really tell. It's kind of hazy in here."

She jumped back as Mr. Wheezy locked his big old eyes on her and spit a new series of fireballs her way. "He's bouncy for a big monster, isn't he?" She said between dodges. 

“Linkle!” Ace Cadet smiled and it would have been a charming expression if his face wasn’t totally dirty with soot. One the fireballs that missed the Hylian came his way and he deflected it with his shield, sending it towards a poor cigarette-bat and it burst into a puff of smoke and ash that rained down on them.

“Tell me about it,” Cadet responded, carving up the giant cigar wherever he could, “also, where’s the rest of his body?” The young man couldn’t help but be curious. He was getting a little better at avoiding Wheezy’s fireballs, and with every one the creature spit the faster Cadet was to get out of the way and back into hacking the guy up.

“At least he’s a one-trick pony!”

As if on cue Wheezy straightened up. He closed his eyes and burned up, dissolving into ash that sank in with the rest. A moment later the other ashtray rumbled and a mountain of the throat-scratching stuff rose up to reform the cigar man. Peach avoided getting flung into the fire by skirting around the ashtray’s edge. A great many cuts smouldered across Wheezy’s tubular body, but he had a lot of surface area and didn’t seem to be throwing in the towel just yet. 

“...or not!”

Peach prepared to fire but Wheezy pursed his lips and blew, billowing ash up. The airflow forced her backward, and with the obscuring smoke she couldn’t see the edge of the ashtray well enough to stop herself. She teetered over the edge, and the sensation of falling filled her with terrified adrenaline. In an instant she used her new muscles to direct her scatterblaster behind her. It blasted downward into the inferno and its recoil pushed Peach up, saving her from falling. Unfortunately her recovery earned her no respect, and it left her unable to dodge the incoming fireball. Instead of taking it Peach brought her weapon around to block it, ruining the scatterblaster in the process. In the past the whole situation would have been too much for Peach, but now the princess was smiling. She flung the half-melted weapon at Wheezy before balling up her fists, ready to lay on the hurt.

"There's the rest!" Linkle said, pointing over to where a new Wheezy had formed to attack the Princess. She quickly flopped herself on her back into the ash to avoid the incoming fire. "Team jump!" She called to the Cadet, bending her knees and raising her legs off the ground. Without a moment’s hesitation the hunter mimicked what he’d only got a glimpse of before, launching himself off of Linkle like she was a human (or Hylian) springboard. 

Ace Cadet sailed across the expanse a little more gracefully this time, smashing shield-first into Wheezy’s face. When he landed he noted the princess’ fighting stance and half-laughed, half-coughed with the smoke. 

“You okay Ms. Peach?”

She kept her eyes on the cigar as he shook his head to clear away the dizziness from the bash. “Just fine. Let’s finish with this...buffoon.” Pushing off the ashes, she maneuvered toward the right. Wheezy hawked one fireball her way, but by now his basic attacks reeked of predictability. Peach sidestepped it before whirling around with a right hook. It tore right through the cigar paper and carved a sizable chunk of Wheezy’s gray ash out, which cooled off into white ash as it hit the ground. “Huh,” she said, noting how much more effective both it and the Cadet’s shield bash seemed to be than all his cuts. “He doesn’t have any vitals and he’s soft, so blunt strikes work best!” Straight away she started punching, using the brawling style ingrained in her by her fusion with Mr. Grimm.

Linkle fluttered over, clinging to her Cucoos legs to augment her jump, just in time to put the Princess's advice into practice. The second she hit solid ground she dashed forward, laying a flying kick into the body of the cigar before following it up with a spinning barrage of blows while he was focused on Peach.

For his part the Cadet sheathed his sword and cracked his knuckles. Normally he wasn’t a bare-fisted fighter, but his shield would be more than enough he figured.

“Nice thinking ladies!” he called out, nimbling side-stepping another fireball when Wheezy turned his ire to the other fighters. With a big wind-up he smashed his shield into the cigar’s leafy hide, drawing it back and driving it forward again. He wasn’t nearly as quick as the girls with his attacks, but all the same he was determined to get the job done.

The three-pronged barrage proved to be more than Wheezy could handle. “Oof, 

ow! What gives?” he grumbled, starting to turn to ash again in order to relocate to the other tray. 

Peach scowled. “This is going to take forever.” She moved forward to try and give the ash a sweeping kick, but Wheezy suddenly re-formed and blasted her with a fireball at point-blank rage. Its flames scorched her skin, hair, and clothes, but when they subsided there was more anger than pain. “Grrrrah! That’s IT!” Wild-eyed, the princess reached forward without thinking, plunging through Wheezy’s exterior. Her fingers caught on something, and when she yanked her hand free, she held the cigar’s spirit in her hands. Red and fiery, it struggled like mad. Straining to keep a hold of it as it fought to return to its body, Peach allowed the others the moment they needed to prepare a strong attack just for Wheezy when he returned.

“Whoa!” Cadet exclaimed, looking at the princess with surprise. He hadn’t known the woman long but he felt like he was seeing a new side of her. Warrior princess Peach! And better not to waste the chance, right? While the cigar was reeling, the hunter aimed his grappling hook at Wheezy’s elongated nose and pulled himself up once it caught. He didn’t have any fancy finishers, but he figured a well placed shield bash to the face should be more than enough.

"Hey!" Linkle yelled up to him from below. "How strong are you?" 

The hunter paused in the middle of his wind up and blinked down at her. “Not to brag or anythin’ but pretty strong!”

That was all Linkle needed to hear. She said, extending her open palm toward the shield on the hunters arm and concentrating as hard as she could. Frost crept across the surface of it as it began to give off a chill, then ice began to grow and grow, spreading out to make the shield bigger. It doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size, its new surface studded with uneven bumps. Big, heavy, more like a small glacier than a shield. "That strong?" She shouted excitedly, fully prepared to add more in the name of making this cooler and more devastating. 

Once the hunter got used to the new weight, wobbling a little on his perch and hefting the block of ice left and right, he peeked down at Peach wrestling with the spirit before giving Linkle a toothy grin.

“I can go bigger!”

Linkle grinned back. "Say when!" She poured everything she had into it, the shield growing slowly and steadily, not letting up until the Cadet was satisfied. The mini-glacier grew in size until the hunter only just struggled to hold onto it. He shouted back, “When!” and in one motion brought the huge ice hammer down onto Wheezy’s face.

Peach released the spirit just in time, awakening the cigar at the perfect moment to receive a monumental blow to the moneymaker. He sank back in the ash, lying against the rear rim of the tray, bruised, torn, and completely unconscious. Around the heroes the fires uniformly died down, as if the knob on a giant grill has been reduced to its lowest setting. While still hot, smoky, and thoroughly unpleasant, the bonfire arena was now at peace. Peach raised her sleeve to act as a filter as she took a deep breath, only to find it cut off as Gneidxick’s giant foot came down from above.

His shoe landed not on the heroes, however, but on Mr. Wheezy. He squished the cigar down, grinding him beneath his heel, until he’d been worked into the ash again. All the while, the sound of the highroller coughing resounded from above--evidently he’d been watching the whole time. The Gneidxick leg then departed, leaving the heroes with two full ashtrays, a couple lazily-circling cigarette bats, a portal back to the game board, and little else.

After nothing happened for another moment Peach exhaled. She seemed more or less back to normal.

Meanwhile the exaltation Linkle had felt when the Cadet had connected with his giant shield bash was dampened just like the fire when that giant foot had come down and ground the Wheezy into nothing. "What the heck? Wasn't that guy one of his?" She asked, aghast. "That's super evil."

That reminded her, there should still be something of hers in here. She looked around for the birds, starting to panic slightly when they were nowhere in sight. She brought her fingers to her mouth and whistled, and to her relief three dirty little heads poked up from the ash and shook themselves off before scurrying up to her. "Don't scare me like that, I thought you got stepped on." She said, radiating relief. She scooped them up into her arms before turning to the Cadet and Peach. "So, is that big guy with the box for a head…?" She trailed off, having a pretty good guess who it was.

“The Guildmaster, yeah,” Cadet supplied, letting the ice melt off his shield and using the water that fell from it to clean the soot off himself a little. “I didn’t think he was that bad a guy, but obviously I was wrong! Stepping on his own pal like that, it’s like, the opposite of groovios.”

The red head’s expression was pinched with displeasure both at Gneidxick’s actions and the continued foulness of the smoky area. Still, before making his way back through the portal he smiled and held a fist out toward the ladies.

“Anyway, nice work! You gals are great hunters - er, I mean fighters!”

Linkle returned the gesture, chuffed at the praise. "You know it! We're gonna show that lying slimeball how great we are personally, right Princess?" Linkle started to the portal before stopping and turning back to Peach. "Oh yeah, can you use your spirit powers to find the smokey guys spirit? I think it must be buried in the ash somewhere."

There was no spirit to be found, though. As Linkle stepped through the portal she wasn't sure how relieved she should feel about that. 

[hr]

[center][color=darkgreen][h1]Just Linkle[/h1][/color][/center]

Linkle was content to let somebody else roll the dice, because she honestly didn't even understand what sort of game the Guildmaster was playing. At least until Michael and Franklin dropped in too and the man explained the rules again for those late to class. The two of them acclimated rather quickly to the new game, choosing a portal before Linkle could apologize for not warning them off. She's just assumed everyone must have been down here. Tora and Poppi likewise got right back into it, stepping through a portal that closed behind them. 

But Linkle was ancy. For all she knew, they were on a time limit here. They didn't have time for this. 

"Hey!" She called up to the guildmaster, stepping forward and cupping her hands around her mouth to shout up at him. "Can't we just fight you? I know you can fight, we saw what you did with the smokey guy. Our friends could be in trouble, I don't want to waste time right now playing a game like this." There was something off about this, but she didn't know quite what. Standing here in this smokey room on a big table, surrounded by giant monsters and Stalfos, that giant blocky face looming over them, it was all so unreal but there was something else. Something that had been gnawing at the back of her mind since she'd started floating down here, since she'd first caught sight of what she now knew was the guildmasters true form. "Why even play around if you've got it out for us? Is it one of those things where we get brainwashed if we lose? Did the Hand tell you to do this?" She gasped. "Is this what happened to Din?!?"

Just at that moment her eyes shot wide as she realized what it was. Din was the key. It was something she never would have taken note of her encounter with Din last night wasn't still fresh in her mind. Whatever anger and urgency Linkle felt momentraily ground to a halt, replaced by pure confusion. 

"No." She said. "Your eyes aren't red."