Linkle hit the ground hard, and she let out a string of curses that sent her attacker taking a half-step backwards, surprised, as she struggled to her feet.
"…Foul mouth for the Emerald Dart, hmm?" The Lord of Diamonds asked, tilting his head to the side as he dropped down beside his cohort. The Usurper seemed more confused by her outburst than anything else, and was still staring at her when she got to her feet.
"You need to talk to that Shadow about his naming thing. He's terrible at it."
"Do you have anything better, girl?" As always, they got defensive about the youngest member—as far as she could figure—of their gang.
"That's besides the point." Which was what she said every damn time they had this argument, which was about every damn time the assholes did something illegal and she needed to take care of it.
"Then you have no right to complain." The Lord of Diamonds said, shrugging his shoulders daintily as he swept his fingers through his hair dramatically. And even though she'd promised herself she wouldn't, she found herself asking anyway.
"So before I drop you off at the nearest prison, would you mind sharing some lipstick tips?" The Princess was going to kill her, but…well, it was worth asking. She and the Twilight Queen had had lengthy discussions about how fantastic the Lord of Diamond's lipstick always was, even after a battle. Life goals, that.
His eyes—well, visible eye, anyway—widened dramatically for a moment, and then he grinned, preening beneath the attention. The Usurper turned to look at his companion, pupil-less orbs blinking like a lizard's as he looked up.
Mad as a hatter, he was, but at least he was smart enough to see through the distraction. Which wasn't really a distraction because she meant it, but the Princess never let any opportunity go to waste.
A blazing arrow slammed into the cement between the two criminals, and Linkle yanked her hood down, emerald magic flaring to life at her fingertips and glossing her vision in green lenses, keeping her from going blind at the Princess's magic.
She was more…manual than the Princess, or the Twilight Queen. She had magic, but she couldn't utilize it much in the middle of a city, all cement and steel and glass. She needed natural things, animals and plants and live magic to manipulate great magics. Simple tricks could do very well, though, and she ran with Sheik when she wasn't working out herself, to keep in shape.
So she wielded crossbows and used her magic for bolts, unless it was a long fight—she kept real arrows in a pair of quivers at her hips. Most of her prowess came from herself, not magic.
And that was a very good thing, because her magic had…consequences.
"You said you could handle this."
As usual, any respect she had for the Princess disappeared in about three seconds after the girl opened her mouth.
The Princess was as intimidating as she was regal. Golden hair pulled into two strands bound and weighted at the bottom with golden diamonds in the front, back pulled into a braid similarly weighted with a golden loop, there was never a strand out of place on her head. She wore short shorts with thigh-high metal heels and an armored golden corset and breastplate, arms covered in cloth and metal as well. A pale pink cowl covered the lower half of her face—the fabric wrapped loosely around her throat, but it was done seamlessly so that it wouldn't come free—and solid golden eyes blazed out above them, pupil-less and iris-less, which was always unnerving. A bow made entirely of light was clutched in her hands, an arrow notched and glowing brilliantly already.
She had the best coordinated outfit out of any of them, except for the Twilight Queen. Linkle wore red shorts, high leather boots, and a white shirt beneath a short green hooded cape. All homemade. She'd inherited her grandmother's skill with a needle, thank Farore. And she put it to damn good use.
"I am."
"You always put me in a good mood, my dear. But your friend…" The Lord of Diamonds spat the last bit out, snapping his fingers. A flurry of red, white, yellow and black diamonds swallowed his hand and when they disappeared, he was holding a black sword with an intricate, strangely curved hilt.
"No, she irritates everyone, not just you." Linkle sighed, and readied her crossbows.
She had had to take a very specific stance in her dealings with the crazies of Castle Town, she had learned very quickly. She'd seen the Lord of Diamonds commit atrocities to innocents simply because he could, seen the Usurper murder anyone that came too close to him in his madness, seen them blow up buildings and commit horrible crimes. But she kept that separate from her personal dealings with them, the banter and the fighting. There was something unreal about it, something that put distance between what they did and who they were when she was in the thick of the battle, when the thrill of the fight meant more than stopping them or killing them. Battle-lust, the Twilight Queen called it.
So, without all the crazy shit they did, she genuinely liked the Lord of Diamonds and his companion. But that didn't mean she wouldn't stop them, or that she would allow them to do whatever it was they wanted. She would stop them.
And then maybe just…bother them later when they were in cuffs about their fashion stuff. Even the Usurper had good taste, though Linkle would never be able to pull off the fringed look he preferred.
"Where is the Hero?" The Lord of Diamonds asked, frowning at the two of them. Linkle shrugged, but before the movement was over, the Princess had loosed another arrow.
"You bitch—"
"That was rather…unfair of you." The Usurper interrupted, speaking slowly and lazily. He'd erected a shield that had deflected the arrow, a transparent black barrier laced with crimson markings, and without warning it was gone—and he was tackling the Princess, little more than a blur as he sent her flying back into the brick wall behind them.
Linkle did something very stupid then, and turned, surprised and more than a little excited to see if the Princess lost some of her composure at the sneak attack. And then shrieked in surprise when a black blade slashed by her face, cutting a thin scratch along her cheek.
"Fuck, you almost gave me a fucking heart attack!" She gasped, turning to face her attacker.
"I do play to kill. You know that, don't you?" And he sounded like he was seriously asking, looking almost unsure of it.
Linkle fired her crossbows, drawing a yelp of surprise from him as he teleported farther away—but she'd still hit him, and an identical cut marred his cheek. His eyes were wide, and she watched as he reached up, pressed a glove hand to his cheek and stared when it came away red with blood.
She usually tried to avoid his face. He got…more violent than he usual was, when anything happened to it—which was saying something.
"To be fair, you hit my face first."
His eyes did that weird thing they did when he was beyond reason, where his pupils narrowed to little pinpricks threads of black began to creep across his otherwise pale skin.
And when he drew his arm back, obviously intended to lunge at her, a brilliant blaze of blue light slammed down on him from above.
The Hero had arrived, it seemed.
He wore a green mask over his eyes, similar to the one she wore—except hers was made of magic, ensuring it didn't look stupidly awkward and always stayed on. His might have been too, as it looked similar, but he'd ensured that it was a solid, opaque piece of green glass-like material that never fell off. And Linkle and the Twilight Queen tried hard.
He wore tight tan skinny jeans with silver armor strapped on with dark brown leather, chain mail beneath a long green tunic, and heavy leather gauntlets with metal embedded in the knuckles. Dark brown leather straps crisscrossed his body, keeping the tunic and chainmail close to his body and offering a place for him to hang his shield and sword, when he wasn't trying to stab things with them. A strange mash-up between what the legendary Hero of Old looked like and what any random teenager looked like, but on him, it worked.
Rumor said that, when the Master Sword had gone missing a few years back, the Hero had been the one to find it. He'd picked it up, and it had marked him, and refused to allow him to put it back in the museum where it was supposed to go. He'd once mentioned that the artifact had sort of kicked his sense of justice into overdrive, which was why he'd slapped on his stupid mask and started fighting crime. Linkle didn't know how much of that was true or not, but he'd been the last of their little group to show up—appearing shortly after the Twilight Queen had made her first appearance to the public.
His sword was blazing with blue-green light, and the Lord of Diamonds' blade was shrieking against its edge, multi-colored diamonds sparking like flames from the point of contact between the two swords. And then the Hero leapt backwards, landing just in front of Linkle.
"You okay?"
"Just a scratch. Where have you been?"
"Avoiding the Shadow." He muttered, and raised his blade as the Lord charged. Linkle readied her crossbows and fire a handful of bolts at the man's rapidly approaching figure, smirking at the Hero's words.
All she knew about that particular mess was that the Shadow wanted to kill the Hero, and was more than a little obsessed with doing so. And that the Hero was rather difficult about fighting him—but for good reason. Things tended to spiral out of control once the two of them started going at it, and that usually made whatever dangerous situation they were in worse.
The Lord of Diamonds was usually very formidable in the state he was currently in, but with more than one adversary and his tendencies to just zero in on one person, it didn't take long for the Hero to bash the back of his head with the hilt of his sword. The Lord's legs gave out almost immediately, and he hit the ground hard.
Linkle twisted her fingers into a sharp, careful pattern at her hip and emerald magic shimmered into existence around his wrists, encasing both of his hands before solidifying.
"Went down easy today." The Hero muttered, and his magic burned sharply against hers for a second as he reinforced it—not that Linkle needed the help, but they'd learned not to take chances when dealing with the Lord of Diamonds.
Not for the first time, she was struck by just how similar his power was to hers, and eyeballed him critically as she shrugged.
Behind them, the Princess was still struggling with the Usurper.
"They were just distracting us today."
"How can you tell?"
"The Shadow's floating over by the mall with the Witch and our favorite Queen."
"…How do you know that?"
Fucking men.
"Go help the Princess handle her end of the stick. I can keep the Lord tied up." He stopped, turned and looked at her flatly.
"This isn't one of those sexist things is it? You're not going to get pissed that if I say sure and go on some rant about how by leaving you to do the babysitting I'm perpetuating—"
"No, you dumbass, she's just more bitchy than usual today and she's only said like, three words to me. I'll shoot her before I shoot the criminal."
The Hero was quiet for a moment, then dipped his head, sheathing his blade.
"I resent being saddled with the babysitting duty, but I do have to say, she's usually pretty civil. She just doesn't like social-ing or anything."
"Social-ing?" Linkle repeated, choosing to ignore how he'd come to the Princess's defense.
She didn't know any of the other 'heroes' outside of them doing their job, and she didn't intend to. But still, it rankled, this stupid little drama and the side-taking that wasn't really side-taking. Mostly because she hated catching herself doing it, how ridiculously furious she got over such dumb, trivial little things that were, most of the time, unintentional.
Not that she would ever mention it to anyone, ever. Zelda had once said it was a woman thing, but that was bullshit. Sheik got just as worked up as she did over stupid things too. And so did Link, but Link had the common sense to never talk about it ever. Linkle had been trying on that, but having Midna and Sheik as best friends sort of negated it. Bad influences, those two.
The Hero shrugged, and then jogged off, following the sounds of screeching and the blast of arrows behind them.
Linkle leaned against the wall behind her, and shrugged when the Lord of Diamond's furious gaze met hers, an almost exact replica of the Hero's gesture.
"What can I say? He's a good side-kick."
"Bullshit."
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I'm not joking about the lipstick thing, people. I DL'ed his MMD model and was playing around with it and holy shit guys, it's fucking amazing. I would take cosmetology lessons from Ghirahim any day. (Think I've said this before lol)
So basically Linkle is Batman. FYI. You don't mess with her lol.
I HAVE SO MUCH PLANNED FOR THIS FIC HOLY SHIT GUYS IT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. YOU WILL ALL LOSE YOUR SOCKS. (omg I hate lose/loose I always spell it wrong the first ten times). Anyway, be PREPARED FOR AWESOME.