[center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/546056855978377216/858843614732615700/hgtrfed.png[/img][/center]

[center]Word Count: 1173 [/center]

[center][color=00aeef][b]Level 5[/b] [/color] - (63/50) + 2[/center]

[center][color=darkgreen]Level 9 [/color] - (45/90) + 2[/center] 

[hr][hr]

[center][h1][color=00aeef]Link[/color][/h1][/center]

[center]Location: The Bottomless Sea ~ The Maw[/center] 
[@DracoLunaris][@Yankee][@Dark Cloud]
[hr]

When the moogle offered the back scratcher to them he might not have expected anyone to take him up on that offer, but Link was a career hoarder. He accepted it without hesitation and slotted it into his belt as a fallback weapon. Anything was a weapon if you put your mind to it, after all. 

It was interesting that the moogle didn't seem at all hungry, but maybe it was just that he hadn't been here long enough for whatever foul magic permeated this place to take effect. "Well, that's good at least. You should probably get out of here before that sets in, this place is..."

Link trailed off as he saw Ms. Fortune and the Cadet reappear up in the catwalks. Were they coming back? Had something gone terribly wrong? His confusing only became more pronounced when when they set to work on the catwalk itself, cutting into the chains holding the platform up and making the journey across them more perilous. For who? Were they being chased by something?

Link's questions were answered as the final chain snapped and the platform went plummeting into the water. Seconds later, [i]it[/i] erupted from the depth. As it's mouth unfurled to try and snatch the kids above it Link had never before so badly wished for a bomb. A Molduga. Some kind of horrifically warped sea Molduga, all puss and tentacles and wearing a crown of malicious eyes. For a moment Link feared that it was going to make it, fly up there and devoured his comrades, but it was already falling by the time its mouth snapped shut. It slammed back into the water, disappearing but not gone. Lurking. Still lurking. Its prey was still here.

The moment the thing had broken the surface, without even really being conscious of it, Link had swept the moogle behind him and begun backing up away from the edge of the water. His arms were extended, his weapon drawn, so as to shuffle all behind him back toward the relative safety of the stairway toward the doorway they had entered from. Toward more solid ground, were the monster would have a hard time getting them. As he did his mind went back to Ms. Fortune and why they had just antagonized the thing. The answer came quickly, because there was only one; someone was in the water. They had made it through and someone was trying to lower the water, so the creature had to be distracted. 

He looked up again, and wondered if they could do better than distract it.

"I have an idea. Stay here." He said, stepping back out into the depths and whistling up to Ms. Fortune and the Cadet. "OI!" He pointed up to the swinging scaffold above his head, then down at the partially submerged red platform in front of him. "If I lure it over to me, do you think you can drop one of those on him?" 

They would have to cut most of the chains first, saving the last for when the monsters appeared, but that monster was at least twenty percent eyeballs. There was no way some of those getting a heavy sheet of metal dropped on them wouldn't stun the beast. Anything was a weapon if you put your mind to it, after all. 

[hr][hr]

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

[center][h2][color=red]Merge Rate: 31%[/color][/h2][/center]

[center]Location: The Cold Monastery[/center]

[hr]

To say Linkle was taken aback by the woman in the towers basement would be an understatement. That statement would be buried somewhere deep in the earths molten core. Gods were supposed to be august, beautiful, almost incomprehensible things that kept watch on the world from far above. When they had first entered the room Linkle had on instinct bowered her head and set here eye on the floor just in case a real god was to great for her fragile mind. 

The sight of this woman did momentarily break Linkle, but not from awe. This wasn't a temple, or some kind of sanctuary. This was a playpen, a place you held children. Messy children, judging by the pictures scattered around. This wasn't a child though, this was a grown woman. A beautiful woman, to be sure, but one that was doing everything in her power to convince you otherwise. She also fit the incomprehensible aspect, but again not at all in the way Linkle had expected. She talked weird when the Father drew her attention, less like she was far above them and more like she wasn't all there. 

More than any of that, though, was that she felt way too real. As she proffered her newest picture to Linkle for appraisal the action itself seemed to have too much weight to it. She breathed. She gave off body heat. She was just so..so...there! There was nothing ethereal about this, not like the statues from earlier. It was like she was just an ordinary woman, no different from Linkle or Din or the lady that worked behind the desk back at the guild. Linkle thought for a moment that this must be some kind of prank or mistake.

Then there was the dog which, while charming, was a completely different can of worms.

And yet...

This was the woman that the Stanger had taken an interest in. No matter what, out of everything here, she had said something that caused him to go off. She hadn't always been like this, she had to remember that. It was unsettling to think that the Stranger could beat even a god as physical as this to the point of insanity, but it also implied some kind of connection. 

Gently coming out of here shock she reached over and took the picture from the goddess Skadi. She had no idea what a kawaii was, and so had no idea what the woman was asking her. She didn't want to offend her or anything. Then she had an idea of how to find out. She smiled, held up a finger to Skadi, then knelt down. She took a deep breath and placed her palms on the floor between the scattered drawings, then looked at the dog sitting in the middle of the room.

Her hair flashed blue as she poured cold onto the floor. Ice started to grow, first as a thin sheet between her hands before it began to build upwards. Linkle bit down on her bottom lip as she concentrated, growing the ice into the shape before her. Steadily it began to take form, paws sticking out and tail curling up out of a loaf of a body. A chuffy neck rising up, and from it three points the molded themselves into ears and a snout. In a few seconds the ice had arranged itself into a replica of the dog about the size of a bowling ball. Linkle looked up at at Skadi from her kneeling position, he hair shifting back to its prober color. She had only one question. "Kawaii?"