Bingo! There, what did I say? I said that I was going to crank out two chapters today! See? I do what I say I'm going to do... sometimes.

Disclaimer: If Zelda was mine, I wouldn't write fanfiction, I would write plot lines for games.

Chapter 36: I Am Jumped By A Kangaroo (Dakota's POV)

The first thing I was aware of when I came to was the pain in my head. Have you ever lit your head on fire? I haven't, but I don't have to now because I think I probably know how it would feel. I groaned and brought my hand up to my face, feeling the stickiness as I touched my skin. What happened? Oh, that's right, we'd crashed our ship.

"Oh, goddess," I heard Link's voice, "Guys! I found Dakota!"

I tried to raise my head a bit in order to look at him, keeping my right eye closed in an attempt to keep the blood from trickling into it, but I quickly gave up when I felt the pain in my shoulder. Well, the neck bone is connected to the back bone, and I was pretty sure that somewhere along there, the back bone is connected to the shoulder bones. I was no expert on anatomy, but I guess if you try to lift your head and shoulders and your shoulder is broken, the result is something like this.

"Ow..." I mumbled, "What hit me?" I felt like I'd just been hit by an eighteen wheeler. Of course, those didn't exist in Hyrule, so what was the Hylian equivalent of an eighteen wheeler? A train? A cart? An eighteen wheeled cart?

"Hold still and drink this," Link said. I heard the sound of a cork popping out of a bottle and felt the glass rim pressed to my lips as he helped me sit up a bit, "You were too close to the railing and fell overboard when we hit. There was fog, but the waters weren't rough, so after the rest of us got off in the life boat and made it to shore, me and a few others went to look for you. Don't you remember? You'd banged yourself up pretty badly, but you were clinging to one of the rocks."

Come to think of it, I did remember clinging to a rock. It was either that or go under, so of course that seemed like the better of the two options. I remembered having a hard time because I'd smashed it with my arm after falling over the deck and had just bobbed there and clung with one hand. It was fuzzy though. I must've blanked out a bit after they'd come to get me. "Y-yeah," I replied, "I think I remember that..."

I took a sip of the contents of the bottle and immediately spit it out. "Pfffft! Ew!" It was bitter and nasty, and the texture was something along the lines of drinking a bottle of slugs.

"I know it's bad, but you're going to have to try to get a little down," he said, "Just a little. Come on."

I reached up with my good arm and pinched my nose as I forced myself to swallow. The lack of my sense of smell helped with the taste a bit, but the texture remained as gross as ever. I managed to choke a bit down, gagged, and made a very rude face.

Link put the cork back into the bottle of red liquid and placed it back in his bag. "I know," he said, "Potions are nasty, but they do the trick. Try your arm now."

Hesitantly, I moved my right arm a bit. It was a bit stiff, but the pain had faded. I reached up and wiped the blood off of my forehead. Those scrapes and scratches had healed as well. With the use of my right arm restored, I climbed to my feet.

The rest of the crew was gathered only a short distance away, and seemed to be deep in discussion about the situation at hand. The ship was pretty much useless. Or at least, it was from my point of view. I was in no way an expert of ships, but I was pretty sure that if your boat has huge holes torn down the sides, it's not very sea worthy anymore.

"Yo, my peeps!" I said, approaching the others, "I think you have some holes in your ship."

Everyone nodded solemnly in response except Tetra. Said girl simply turned and shot me an unamused glare. "Thanks for the report," she grumbled, "Now are you just going to stand there and be smart, or are you going to come and help us find someone to fix this mess?"

For once, I wasn't smart with her. The sooner we got the ship repaired, the sooner I could go back to concentrating on finding the others. "Yeah, I'm going," I replied.

Tetra's frown remained in place, but she just nodded without saying anything rude. "The good news is, we were heading for the mainland and it seems that we're on the mainland's coast," she said, then pointed out to the north, "There should be a town out that way. It's a fishing town so I think we can assume that they know how to deal with ships."

"Shouldn't be too hard to find," Nico chimed in, "Straight on through the woods if I remember right. They're not too far back, but they built it away from the beach to avoid the summer heat."

It made since to me. If there was one thing that going to the beach would teach you, it's summer sun, plus sand, plus your bare feet, equals an ouch of the highest degree. I couldn't imagine living in a place where I'd have to walk on hot sand just to get from one end of town to the other.

"Then it's settled," Tetra concluded, "Everyone, move it! We're going to get a repair crew!"

We followed after her towards the trees ahead. My Converses were gathering more sand with every step I took. Hopefully, they were right about this place not being too far away, because I had a feeling that when I got to sit down and empty my shoes, I'd have enough sand in them to build a sandcastle. It didn't help that I wasn't wearing socks, so as I walked along, I was still walking on hot sand even with my shoes on.

The shade was welcome. You always know it's hot when you can actually feel the difference the instant you move into the shade. I immediately reached up and unzipped my hoodie as realization dawned on me. Of course I was hot out here. I'd had my freaking jacket on the entire time.

"Everyone, stay close," Tetra ordered, "There've been monsters around this area lately."

There was a path cleared through the trees. Probably so the people of the village could get to the shore and back more easily. Staying close to the crew wasn't very hard, considering the fact that they were in plain sight from the cleared area.

We'd been walking only for a short time when Tetra suddenly paused. "Shh," she said, "I hear something."

Back in my world, I would have been making up some story about a situation like this in which I killed the monsters like a boss while doing some hardcore parkour moves. In real life though, it was different when you were the only one in a group that didn't have a weapon. Even if I had one, I wouldn't have known how to use it. The only knowledge I had about swords could pretty much be summed up in one quote from "Game of Thrones", "Stick 'em with the pointy end".

The bushes beside me rustled and I jumped back a bit. It wasn't quite far enough. The instant whoever was hiding there jumped out, I found myself plowed to the ground. In a reflexive action, I immediately grabbed for something. Suddenly, I found myself gripping something solid. There was a loud exclamation of "Ouch!", and then the object was gone and I was on my back.

"Ow! Right in the nose!" the fellow complained, "You alternate earth magicians have some sharp magic!"

I lay there for a moment, trying to get my bearings before standing once again. The kangaroo stood there, rubbing his nose with one hand, which was covered with a large boxing glove. "Ah, sorry man!" I apologized, "What did I just do? I have no idea how that happened!"

The kangaroo removed his hand from his nose, which I could now clearly see had been sliced up a bit and was bleeding. "Ow..." he whined again, "Don't worry about it too much, but be more careful with that."

"Hate to disappoint you, bro," I said, "But I can't be careful if I don't know what I did."

"Ah, well," he sighed, "Then just don't worry about it. Anyway, if you can do that little trick, it looks like I've found the right person."

"Er..." I backed up a little. It was probably stupid to take a talking kangaroo so seriously, but I was having a bit of trouble telling if someone meant to help me or hurt me when they told me they'd been looking for me, "And you are?" I asked.

"Sorry," he said, "Name's Ricky. I was sent from the village ahead." The kangaroo made the most sheepish expression a kangaroo possibly could, as if asking 'come on. Don't you trust me?'. "Are you Dakota?"

Frankly, it was becoming harder and harder for me to find a kangaroo intimidating. Heck, I was surrounded by guys with swords. If he was a villain, no matter how unlikely that seemed, it wasn't like I didn't have anyone to help me out here. "Yeah, that's the name," I replied, "Ask me again and I'll tell ya the same."

"Really?" he asked, "Good! Then, we should get rolling! The Oracle of Seasons wants to have a word with you!"

AN: A little shorter than the last one, but I'm still proud of myself to making my double update. We've had snow and freezing rain up here so I'll try to write again tomorrow. There's not going to be a whole lot else to do, after all.

Questions!

Does anyone have any good anime they can recommend? I'm catching up with Log Horizon right now.

If you write, how are your stories going?

How are you tonight?