[center][h1][color=darkgreen]Linkle[/color][/h1][/center]
[center][h3][color=red]Merge Rate: 33%[/color][/h3][/center]

[center]Word Count: 968[/center]

[center][color=darkgreen]Level 10[/color] - (35/100) + 2[/center] 

[center]Location: Frozen Highlands - Snowy Forest [/center]

[i][color=67a4e0]Frisk[/color] [@Majoras End],  [color=skyblue]Albedo[/color] [@Lugubrious], & [color=f7976a]a stalker[/color][@XoXKieroBombXoX][/i]
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It took some time, enough for them to well and truly leave the busy hunters behind, for Linkle to stop and take in a long pull of a crisp air. "Wow," she started, a tinge of nervousness still flavoring her voice. She looked back the way they had come. "That could have been really awkward, right?" She said to her companions, looking back and forth between Frisk and Albedo expectantly. "I mean, maybe I've got this totally wrong but living in death kinda describes my whole deal right now. Right?"

It seemed as though the only thing their distance had gained Linkle was the ability to be openly jittery, a steady drip feet of anxiety supplied by the Skull Heart only supplementing what was already occurring naturally. It built on the feeling that had already been there, before even meeting the hunters. Since she found the hole she had locked her enemy in uncorked. She couldn't seem to calm down. She wasn't being allowed to calm down. "You guys don't think he noticed, right?" She said, glancing backwards again. [color=red]Something was following them.[/color] "It's just, the Heart keeps trying to tell me he noticed and I don't want to believe her but..."

She looked back again. She saw the faintest of shadows disappear behind a tree. [color=red]What was back there?[/color] Linkle shook her head against the impulse to go look and kept walking, reminding herself that the Hearts tricks weren't confined to just verbal taunts. "They seem all right, is all. I don't want to fight them, but he said he was after every last one. It's nonsense, I know." [color=red]What was that noise? What's moving?[/color] "Shut up." She said under her breath, clenching her eyes shut and doubling her pace. There was nothing back there. It was just the Skull Heart doing its regular thing, harassing any weakness it found in her armor. It didn't matter how small the crack was, it took its shot. [color=red]None of which meant something wasn't really watching them.[/color]

"This is going to sound weird, but can you guys talk?" She asked. "It can be about anything. Friends? Romance? A funny story? I think it'd be better if I had someone to listen to right now."

One thing that helped set her mind more at ease was their emergence from the forest. Less trees made for less cover, less ability for anyone tailing them to hide. Less of a chance that the paranoia she felt was natural, easier and easier to dismiss as something that was being fed to her by her dark passenger. She was sad to see that her feelings might have been catching, as Albedo started kicking at the strange snow piles as they passed through a small canyon. That feeling vanished when something actually did appear out of the snow drift. She drew her weapons' long with the Alchamist, but when she saw what the threat was she lowered them before letting out a big hearty laugh. 

The tension seemed to deflate in an instance. The fact that the phantom eyes the Skull Heart had been so trying to convince her were on them were made of coal and set above a stupid little smile made her feelings seem so silly it almost hurt. She could swear she even felt the Skull Heart feeling sheepish over what all its creeping dread had led up to. "It's a squareman." She got out on the tail end of her laugh, lowering her crossbows. There were even a few more wandering around up ahead, adorable square snowmen without a care in the world. "Some stuff is just made of squares. I even met this guy back in the land of adventure, totally square just like that. I'm pretty sure it's all from the same world."

Albedo didn't relax nearly as much as she did. He spotted the ambush coming a mile away, and started it before they could fall into a fiendishly frozen trap. She was just about to admonish him for cutting down a perfectly harmless snowman when all of it's friends reveled themselves and went on the attack. It was a cold betrayal of the simple relief she had just been immersed in, and she narrowed her eyes at the big one across the gulch that looked to be in charge. "Imani!" She said, pointing one of her crossbows at it. "That one!"

The sniper appeared behind her in a puff of smoke, pointing her giant crossbow over Linkle's shoulder. A pair of the half-melted looking snowmen saw this and chucked their snowball's her way, but Linkle crossed her arms over her chest and body blocked the projectiles until Imani got her charge shot off. Her one shot fired, the striker disappeared to leave Linkle to deal with two of the little ice crown Snowmen surfing across the snow toward her. Linkle threw out her arms in a pair of wide arcs, firing a volley of crossbows at the (admittedly adorable) monsters. Her bolts hit the pair with a noise like fire crackers going off, not sticking into the snowmen as she expended but throwing them back like they were solid. They stayed that way until they hit the ground, where they each exploded into ash with a little [i]pop[/i].

This was met with another hail of snowballs, four balls they felt more like solid ice than snow slamming into her one after the other. "Careful. They're the kind of bully that puts rocks inside." She called to Frisk. She wasn't too worried about the child. If they could dodge her these snowballs should pose no challenge at all. "Feel free to use anything on the sled." With that Linkle charged, sending bolts at any monster that stood between her and the bulky one.