No Poultry, Guaranteed [Doc Genzo]

"The bow? Yeah it dinnae seem magic er nothin'. Prob-ly it's the key to puzzles in here. How funny is THAT?! Some people probably can't even use one. Like us!" she announced. "Oh. Poo."

She thought about what it would mean to shoot it. There were over a dozen arrows which Ruairi had kindly snatched up. They'd have more than enough shots unless there was literally twelve or more puzzles coming up. Eve didn't think it had even been an hour since they entered the portal. Yes, not even ten minutes, an in and out adventure if there ever was one.

"NAAAH! We can win easy. We just have to hit one 'r two shots." Eve remarked while clasping her hands.

The door revealed a hallway, simple enough. Around the corner was a door locked shut with a keyhole. The hallway continued straight in the other direction, presumably back to the front side of the Temple. Evelyn wiped her palm against her chin in thought. A crust of blood from her hand smeared on her artificially pale face.

"Nope." she interrupted. Nope?

Eve threw her stylish Adventure Pouch to the ground. She was officially out of patience for puzzles, and there was one interesting solution she always had crammed up her non-existent sleeves. Her hand slipped into the open pouch, her off hand pushing it open as wide as possible.

"HAHA! HAMMER MARK TWO BAYBEE!" she screamed, almost out of character from Ruairi's perspective.

A long, brass-gold handle covered in a bandage style handle started to tube itself out of the little bag. It almost seemed like the pouch was spewing music out of it as the unrealistically shiny implement started to appear. This child anomaly would do anything but come unprepared for an outing. Finally, as the object almost reached her own body height, a weighty but properly sized mallet head appeared out of the pouch. Engraved into the side of the head were numerals for the number "2."

"Big hammer. We hit the door 'til it breaks." she stated plainly and with a straight face.

As they were saving time, she wasted none to start smashing on the gate. She had already hit it more than enough as they were standing there, and to be completely honest it looked like it wasn't going to budge. She swung at it with vigor, over and over until the stone on the surface was becoming a flour-like powder. This was, with all reason in mind, completely unnecessary. Finally, after a number of additional hits the door began to creak and move. One final, singular strike knocked the door off its hinges. She was probably focused on breaking the hinge rather than the deadbolt in the center. A move that seemed clever, until you realized that she probably discovered this by being blockheaded in all subjects. The stubborn creature gasped with exhaustion, putting the ridiculous tool away. They had avoided approximately one puzzle because of this nonsense.

"Chicky what do you see in the door? Where does it go?" she asked, exasperated.

"Curious." Eve started, but it was clear she had trailed off when she failed to say anything else.

These Pols Voice creatures were said to be incredibly dangerous, albeit this was due to the fact that they had very few weaknesses. Their basic attack patterns were basically nonexistent. Eve caught her breath and managed her length of rope. The Cheval Rope was perfect in managing things that had no means of, well, ripping the sturdy material at all. Which was to say almost nothing alive.

Before either of them knew what was going on, Eve had two bunny blobs tethered to each of her arms. She was no longer capable of doing anything that required hands. Was this the "courage" that the Temple of Courage was named after? No. It was stupidity. It was sheer, unrivaled idiocy. What on Hylia's green earth did these people think they were doing?

"We have two bunnies. I want you to name them. I wanna name 'em both." she articulated.

This was clearly going nowhere, unless on the off chance having two Very Alive and not defeated Pols Voices was crucial to solving an upcoming puzzle. Who in their right mind would have made it this far under these conditions? The two of them vaguely understood what they had done. They were at least tangentially thinking about the consequences of what they had done. Eve's eyes went crooked, she pulled the two creatures to the other side of the room.

There, taking up the entire other half of the room was what looked like a giant scale. It was likely that they had to put something pretty heavy on one side of the scale to lift themselves to the top of the ledge.

"No, I don't think I like that." Eve admitted, staring at the contraption. "Can you learn how to fly really fast? Maybe we can pull them up with us."

No, it couldn't end here. Eve was convinced that they had to make it out intact with both angry bunnies. She scooted over to the scales and tied both monsters to a bar holding the structure up. The insane Kokiri turned around and started to walk back out the door.

"Wait right here I'm getting something." she muttered, hoping Ruairi was still thinking of good names for the two creatures.

Almost a whole ten minutes went by, and sounds of an exhausted girl were now coming from the hallway. Evelyn appeared to be dragging something into the room. The sound of huffing lungs grew louder as a familiar sight appeared. It was a large, spikey cylindrical death trap that was now in her hands. Whatever mechanism was making it roll back and forth was now disabled, as she held the very end of it where it wasn't sharp. She couldn't hold the other side so she was just dragging it painstakingly into the room. Ruairi was suddenly learning what lengths this person was going to go to make full use of magical strength. Some of it, it appeared, was her own strength. At least on some philosophical level it was. Most of what was happening was the kid pushing the magic to the very limits of imagination. The damn thing was probably at the very least "three times" the amount she could pull alone dragging on the floor like this. She was literally taking every inch into account, making sure she could at least get the thing into the room. It looked like the kid was out of gas, she was turning various shades of purple trying to do this.

She crashed on the floor, unable to drag it any further. Her breath came back after a very long pause.

"We gotta. . . get the pillar. . . onto the scale." she strained. She was really struggling. She really, really wanted the Pols Voices to come with them.

"I'm gonna get up. We hafta both lift at the same time and get it up there." she gasped, rolling back over. She was probably going to pass out.

This was, as any sane person could have expected, the Kokiri's tipping point. She groaned, still rolling slowly on the floor.

"You uh, if you have a way up there go on without me." she said aloud, unable to look at the Rito.

Her eyes were in shade, staring blankly at the other wall.

"Maybe. . . able to climb." she let out before going silent.

That was the last of her energy. It looked like she was all done for a while, blacked out and limp on the floor. What did she want with a bunch of angry Pols Voice anyway? They weren't going to be tame no matter where they brought the damnable things. Ruairi would probably have a good chance if he either climbed or shoved the conveniently tied up monsters onto the scales. The Temple seemed to be admittedly pretty safe so far, barring the failings of that adventurous Kokiri. It was risky, but there was a chance the next couple rooms really weren't that bad. The biggest mystery was when that girl would wake up again.

The fever dream of the past half hour would be filled with the peace of silence, minus the clamoring of the two roped up monsters. There must have been some terrible monster deep in the subterrain, but there was no way to find what haunted the island without continuing, persevering and finding out once and for all what it could be. There wasn't much more to be said, as the eccentric child-person lay in a pool of her own drool. Maybe that was the challenge, the test. Just putting up with that character for a whole day.

Time shot by as Ruairi did his best to pass it. Eve was stirring at first, no sign of energy and not too much evidence that she was even dreaming. It was about time something happened to mature her somehow and risking her life to save a bunch of unwilling and enraged monsters was probably some sort of tipping point.

As the pool of drool on the ground started to mix with some of her weird disgusting blood from her hand, she finally started moving. Her first movement was awkwardly and weakly removing that spooky tiara from her head. Secondly, she wrenched the bangles off of her wrists.

"Dumb stupid magic trinkets. I spend all my time doing dumb math trying to figure out how strong these stupid things make me. Then I spend the other half excercising to try to make them worth it! What a waste. I wish I was a dumb stupid baby like how I look. I wasn't a good pirate and now I can't even steal monsters the right way. I always wanted something impressive like one of those big movin' statues. It's no use and they're too hard to control." she complained, wiping the goo off her face with a well-placed hanky.

With the accessories off, she stretched and popped all her joints. She then immediately sighed and put the magic items back on her body.

"Damn it all Chickyman. Let's leave them here and explore. I love the names you came up with! I knew a talented person like you would have something good up yer sleeves." she added, throwing the poor Rito another compliment even though it seemed she was being way too nice.

The Kokiri started climbing the scales, what little length of rope she had left was making the process too easy as she hammered little stakes into the brittle construction of the Temple.

As she went over the ledge, she checked multiple times to keep tabs on her new friend. Her eyes spotted a somewhat long hallway. It was oddly empty and quiet. She was suddenly glad the boy didn't go first. The hallway was apparently trapped somehow but she didn't yet know how. She grabbed a stake from her recent up-and-over and threw it down the hallway. A half dozen blade traps shot out from the sides of the wall and covered the entire floor as they slid back and forth. Any lack of carefullness could lead an adventurer to be chopped into cubes.

"You're right I think." she mentioned, lost in thought suddenly.

The bold Kokiri thought about how her stakes made a way up for her, possibly bypassing the function of the scale platform. She didn't think any adventurer in their right mind should leave house without a small bag of pitons and rope. Whatever kind of foggy-headed sword-slinging Hylian this Temple was designed to challenge would have had to improvise the scales in a way that was intended. Eve had decided to improvise in a different way. After hearing Ruairi's musings she think she had just the right plan.

"Hold on a bit I'm gonnae try somethin'." she reaffirmed.

Climbing back down carefully, Eve finessed the ropes to try to roll the pair of Pols Voice onto the scales. There was a simplistic dish shape to the scales. Eve thought it might be safe to recollect her rope as the bunny-blob things were rolled over. She quickly turned the three lengths of ropes into a sort of harness onto the spiked pillar thing. She rebuilt her strength for a minute or two. The Pols Voices were getting restless so it was a bad idea to waste much more time. She dragged the pillar all the way onto the other side of the scale. The part of the scale she wanted was raised up now that the other was held down by the monsters. Her consideration for details like this was lackluster.

"Wait up there I don't think we can pull the scales down yet." she hollered, sweat forming on her brow.

She thought about all the puzzles, the fixtures and items they got along the way. What could she do with the pillar, the bow and arrows? The Blade Traps? Wait, what? She thought suddenly, like an intrusion had spoiled her tea party. What was that about the Blade Trap? She fixed her rope to climb back up, now with two much longer strands to work with. This was clearly some sort of strand-type puzzle. Her Cheval Rope was heavily resistant to even cutting, which was a mystery in itself because it always showed up in broken strands. She ran into the hallway full of traps with a stake wrapped in a strand of rope. She yo-yoed the rope in front of one of the blade traps. It snapped to the wall and got slightly stuck as per usual. But this time her dangling rope thing was in the way. The stake lodged under the trap and she started to wrap the entire extremely dangerous fixture in the rope with knots. It finally tried to pull itself back to its position. With one big solid tug on the rope it started to slide the other way, down the hall after Eve. That did it, it was clear to all involved parties that she was crazy.

"Get outta da way Chicky!" She yelled as she pulled the hazardous razor down the hall. It was almost as heavy as the spiked one due to being solid metal, but it was designed to slide and pulled away somewhat naturally. She carefully swung her body around the oncoming trap and tugged the rope so it would slide over the edge onto the scale. The Pols Voices, somewhat disoriented already, started to raise at a disturbing speed. In fact, they may have been made of some sort of less dense material as they started to poke over the ledge. They were awkward to pull like a sack of potatoes, but they may not have been that heavy after all.

"Shit we have to leash them again." Eve snapped. She waddled back over to the ledge, her body was pretty sore at this point.

She raced to collect enough of the rope to re-create the lassoes. The Pols Voices were starting to bounce around on the high platform. If they fell off, that was game over for the plucky adventurers. Yeah, it was starting to seem like the two wanted the pets more than they actually wanted to solve the Island's mystery. She managed to flop a lasso over one, and the other struggled a bit too much.

"Leelou isn't comin', we gotta hold it down." she mentioned to Ruairi, as she struggled to hold Chimchurry still.

"I figured it out see." Eve started, probably about to say something completely crazy.

"Four of us are better than two. See. We have more courage this way too." she finished, making her thoughts seem as obtuse as possible.

What was her plan? Did she somehow think the monsters were ready to pass the traps with them, or did she somehow think that the traps were no big deal because of her ropes? She had to face it sooner or later, having really nice ropes wasn't going to solve all of her problems.

"I'd like to tie up every blade trap but I don't think I have enough ropes." she mentioned casually.

The loopy girl seemed to have little to no plan. To inspect the next blade she would have to get up close and figure out what to do. She carelessly approached the line of attack for the next one, gluing her eyes to its sharp edges and trying to come up with a plan. At that moment, Chimchurry started to bounce and hop past the blade trap which would immediately spring it.

"Chimchurry nooo!" Eve screamed, trying to pull back on the rope.

The trap sprung and shot out at the Pols Voice at alarming speeds. The moment it collided with the fleshy bunny's body, it sprung back and slammed against the wall as if the monster was made of impenetrable rubber. The razor blades didn't leave so much as a mark on the creature's skin, minus a single line of grease that smeared off of the metal.

"Aaaaah- what? Whysit okay?" she clamored. It looked like the details of the monster were a total surprise to her.

"The other one?" Eve wondered, perplexed. "Thinkin' we can just bounce our way outta this?"

They both tugged on the ropes and made sure the two monsters were facing the correct way. They shoved their way down the hallway cautiously. Every attack by the traps flung violently in the other direction as the machines bounced their way off the pliable and invulnerable flesh. Eve wondered if even that scale obstacle was legitimate. She didn't think anywhere in the whole dungeon had anything traditionally heavy enough to push them down the correct way. She also had a sneaking feeling that the arrow-based puzzle they passed also didn't supply or gift anything meant for the scales. Had they been gipped and just got really lucky? No. That was dumb, there HAD to be an explanation.

They bounced multiple traps until reaching the very end of the hallway. It had soon become a topic of interest that bending the wrist of a dungeon was the way to go. For it seemed like the place itself had been breaking some rules. In front of the two aghast adventurers was what looked like the remains of a boss door. The lock had been rent to metal shards and the stone monolith of a doorway had been cleft in twain.

"Ha. Ha. Ruairi we really found it now." Eve anxiously admitted, giving the rare mention of a person's actual name.

The wide open door wasn't even pitch black inside. What kind of door lit from the outside should be lacking that much visibility anyway? It seemed like the culprit was standing in front of them just inside the chamber. Some odd, unsettling crab-like creature with a big red hermit crab shell was sitting in the center chewing the guts out of a Hardhat Beetle. In its other pincer and standing next to said creature were two unbelievably ergonomic statues, probably intended for that scale puzzle. It really went that far out of its way to make the dungeon harder. As if devouring all of the courage around itself physically, it kept chewing and glared its horrible red eyes at the two tourists.

Dumb Stupid Puzzle Ruiner
CRAYK​

"WE HAVE TO FIGHT THAT?" Eve roared. It didn't look like she had ever done one of these without someone strong helping her.

"Aw crap. You saved me!" Eve whispered. She thought maybe the crab monster had some sort of poor object permanence skills. "That piece of rubbish is only gettin so big 'cos it's eatin' all the courage of the island town." she attempted to refresh the reality of the situation.

Eve put her dumb gremlin head to work. They had to beat that thing if they were to be successful in the mission. Conversely, if they found some sort of exit past it they could just leave the aching complacent villagers to die of boredom and starvation due to lack of motivation. These were a lot of big words that Eve didn't usually think about.

"Damn it all." Eve resigned. "We can get treasure if we kill that thing."

She started putting together a plan in her head. Wild and fluid pictures in vibrant crayon danced around in her head. Some kind of fire-breathing dinosaur cooking the crab alive, maybe something involving a catapult and a giant bomb. . . none of these were helpful. She did however suddenly remember a bunch of garbage in her pouch that could help.

"What if we sneak up on it and assassinate it?" she conjectured. "I have all the stuff we need for that right here."

Eve reached into her pouch and revealed a weird looking doll that kind of resembled herself. It had button eyes and a dumbfounded look on its face. She didn't have enough rope to keep the Pols Voice pair tied up and lead the doll in at the same time. She was struggling with the idea of having her doll tied to anything anyway, but if she leashed the thing she could tug it away if the boss tried to attack it. Her other plan was to trick the two bunnies into walking in front of the crab while the doll walked around from behind. It was almost guaranteed to work because of how big and invulnerable the things were.

"We can send our new pets over in front of the monster. Then, then! Then we just send the doll over with my crazy sharp dagger to poke its head off. What do you think?" she briefed the shocked Rito as he was probably panicking on some level.

"Aw crud. This knife WILL pro'lly get lodged in 'is shell anyway. No matter how sharp it is." the odd character responded. "If the statues can do the trick then we gotta be careful."

The idea itched like a rash inside her head. They didn't have the articulation of control to get the monsters to knock over both pillars. It was also vague as to how much it could hurt the boss when it was the one to drag those in with its own bulging claws. Rather, falling on its head would probably snap the little thing off, but if it were to catch the statues with its claws it would probably shrug them off easily.

"More 'n careful even." Eve started, soon cut off by what was going on.

Crayk had come right over to investigate the ongoing conversation. It would have looked a bit peeved if the damnable thing didn't have only one expression. This of course was the creature that effortlessly shattered the locked door. With no time to react properly, Eve shoved the vulnerable Rito out of harm's way. An aghast look on her typically indomitable face, Eve jumped backwards as a rock-shattering claw effortlessly slashed through the floor tiles. In immediate retaliation, Eve shoved the presumably invincible Chimchurry into the face of the atrocity. She double checked that her dagger was still in her own hand and started to climb on the towering shell of the fortress of a creature.

There was a brief silence before a harrowing screech came from below. The high-pitched bellow that came out of Crayk's mouth was some sort of adaptation meant for the unrivaled predation of its rivals. The Pols Voices' ears were fully packed with a sonic attack that curdled its skin from a pliable rubber to some sort of brittle paper. Crayk lunged and tore through Chimchurry with a terrifying force that ripped it to ribbons. A silent chill pierced through the adventurers' hearts. They had been too bold and left their beloved compatriot open to an attack they didn't know about.

"Shit shit shit!" Eve yelled, still climbing on the rough and bumpy shell.

Maybe considering anything to be a meat shield was just a generally bad idea. There was also nowhere near the top of the spiraling shell that the dagger of hers was going to affect. The now-terrified Kokiri was now racing for ideas. All of the plans they had come up with were simply not going to work in this kind of position.

"Shit. Run! Go for the statues!" Eve shouted at Ruairi. She hoped he would get to safety before anything worse could happen.

Eve held on for dear life, tears in her eyes as she clung to the tall spiral shell. It was likely anyone else would have fought this monster face to face. . . hopefully with a tower shield or something. It was curious, however. There seemed to be purple mist shooting out of the valves on its crimson shell. Below them, poking out from underneath the shell, were some odd purple boils. It was probably a bunch of odd side effects of it sucking up "courage." Ruminating on what Ruairi had said, Eve considered their options.

"We could probably tie the claws with the rest of the Cheval Rope!" Eve sputtered, holding on tightly. She sadly remembered there was a useable strand on the ground now that their new pet was in ribbons. "We have to try 'n stick those boils too."

Eve swung around on the lumpy cone and launched herself off the side. She aimed her jump at the other Pols Voice. Leelou took the brunt of her fall. Although Crayk was no longer much distracted, her jump was timed in such a way to take the crab off guard. She inched the bow off of her shoulder and slid a good arrow onto the string. She loosed the single arrow into one of the boils. It was too soon to celebrate because she estimated there were at least half a dozen of those, but the boil crumbled as the arrow caught into it. The shell rustled as if something from within was writhing.

"We leggit I think he's gonnae fight back." Eve slurred her speech as she twisted and ran after the successful hit. She was sprinting toward the center of its arena.

Crayk folded its claws in front of its face and started to swirl around. A defensive maneuver. The length of rope was still waiting next to the beast, the Kokiri tried not to forget its significance. Suddenly, some strange golden crab things started to intervene. Eve finessed her hammer out of her bag, the only tool for this sort of thing. There were only two other crabs so far, but Eve suspected there were more. She wrested the weapon over her head and deftly splattered one of the crabs.

"Don't extend yourself!" Eve shouted at Ruairi. "It's too dangerous get back!"

Crayk rocked the ground as it made its way into the large chamber. Purple fog erupted from every valve on its shell and it was suddenly vanished from inside the cloud as if it was never there. This had to be some kind of trick. . . Crayk was somehow invisible and inside the room. Heavy footsteps confirmed it to be true. Luckily for Ruairi it seemed the girl had pissed it off and it had begun in her direction, this time. She was near the statues now, a possible advantage on her part.