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

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

[center][color=darkgreen]Level 9 [/color] - (64/90) + 2[/center] 

[center]Word Count: 1040 [/center]

[center]Location: Frozen Highlands - Alpine Skyline ~ The Old Mill[/center]

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As the pair of them climbed Linkle was able to keep up, maintain a distance of just a little behind the scholar through death defying leaps, close shave shorcuts, and riding on anything that looked as though it was moving upward. So it was that when she reached the point where things in the Old Mill were getting weird, Albedo was already sailing onward and upward on a snakelike trail of green blocks. 

She watched for a moment before looking around to take in the stuff just hanging around in the air. Linkle wasn't a mill expert, but she had been inside the village mill enough to know that floating blocks and squares couldn't have anything to do with grinding grain. They hung there without any sort of apparent reason for staying afloat, like those islands they had fought the dragon or that path they had followed to Peach's castle after they had first woken up. How many world had blocks that just hung like this?

She approached one of the panels, following the trail of them leading across to another beam with her eyes. Hanging near that beam was another of those green blocks. "Yosh!" She had to keep up the pace. No way was she letting Albedo take on those cats by himself. There was only a short gap to get across before she got started, so she took a step back then rushed forward and jumped for the red panel. 

Immediately she learned that this was a dirty trap, because as soon as her feet left the ground the panel swung around under her. Now there was a blue panel covering the gap she had been trying to leap and the place she had been aiming for was now a painful one way trip back to either the first floor or the basement depending on hard her head was. 

Wait, there was one thing! Linkle reached out and her descent came to an abrupt stop as she grabbed ahold of the red bar the panel had been set in. Now she was the one hanging in the air, and as she did she got a good look at just how high she had climbed already. She tilted her head up, spotting the next panel across from her, and scowled. That must be why the cats had their hideout all the way up here. Even if they fell due to one of these devious cat traps they would just land on their feet and walk it off. Clever cats.

Too clever by half! If these cats wanted to hurt Linkle they were better off stabbing her in the back just the prophesy foretold! 

Linkle started to swing back and forth, kicking her legs out to build up momentum before letting go and flying across the gap to the next red panel. Catching the edge, she pulled herself up onto it. She stood on it for a bit, keeping near the edge, just waiting for it to drop out from under her. Surprisingly, it held. In fact, now that she was looking, all the panels in her path seemed to have flipped. She waited for a little while longer just to make sure there wasn't some sort of timer these things worked on, then reached out her foot and tapped the center to the panel she was on. When it didn't have any give at all she was confident enough to step forward onto the panel proper and start planning for the next one. There had to be some kind of trigger, and she had a inkling about what it might be.

The next panel was red again, and Linkle again took a running jump for it. The panel flipped over again, but Linkle was ready for it this time. She splayed her legs as she soared though the air and managed to land one boot on either of the bars that had previously held the panel. She pinwheeled her arms a moment to keep her balance in this split she had landed in. "Jumping is the trigger." She said, looking halfway between pleased with herself for guessing correctly and disgusted with the people who set this trap. "What a nasty trick." 

She started moving her legs, carefully inching herself forward toward the opposite panel, when she had a better idea. "Imani." She called.

The sniper appeared in a cloud of smoke on the opposite panel, crossbow already primed to shoot, but the second she caught sight of Linkle's precarious position she dropped the weapon to her side. "Bleeding Hell!" She said, reaching out and grasping Linkle's outstretched arm before pulling her over onto her panel. 

"I don't thank you often enough." Linkle said as the older women leg her go.

"Well, I don't hang around for it." She replied. She seemed to want to disappear on that note, but something caught her eye and she managed to hang on for a bit longer the usual. "Linkle." She started, and something in her tone made Linkle straighten up. It was the tome of someone that expected to be addressed as [i]Captain[/i], [i]Commander[/i], or perhaps just[i] Ma'am[/i]. "You've managed to lose your primary weapon."

Linkle glanced down at the empty holsters in her boots. "They were stolen, Ma'am. There were cats, they were invisible, they took us completely by surprise." She said nervously, pointing. The snipers eye followed her finger, observing Albedo as he platformed higher and higher. "We're getting them back right now."

"Double time, then." The woman replied curtly as she began to vanish.

Linkle sighed with relief as the sniper dissolved into smoke. She definitely felt like she had just been saved from a proper dressing down, granted a reprieve only because Imani's time in this world was too short for her to built the momentum required for it. As if she needed another reason to get their stuff back.

Now that she knew the trick, though, these panels were nothing. She practically sprinted across the remainder, making it to the other side before hoping on the waiting green block. This trick, thankfully, wasn't a mystery and she was able to ride, jump, sprint, and leap her way up the tower as she followed after Albeado.