Linda

Linda is the main character and protagonist of Stretch Panic.

Appearance

Linda is small, has fair skin, blue eyes and ginger hair held in pigtails with white tips. She wears a purple and orange striped tank top with orange arm bands, green baggy trousers and orange sandals. She wears a red bobble hat with a face on it, the band is purple and has three badges on it.

The most noticeable aspect of Linda's appearance is her green scarf, specifically when it is possessed by the Demons of Vanity; it becomes a black hand that hovers around her, with multicolored patterns and a yellow eye on its palm.

Artwork for Hippa Linda often features Linda with darker, more orange skin, and sometimes no patterns on her hat badges.

Personality

Linda is shown as a kindhearted and caring girl who goes out of her way for her sisters, despite their treatment of her. She loves her sisters very much and is motivated to save them when possessed. Unlike her sisters, she is not as obsessed with her vanity, which is likely why she could not be transformed into a twisted form by the Zako.

The manual describes her as mature, hard working and good natured, aspects she took on from her father. She has effortless authority over her possessed scarf, and can command it to grab and stretch things.

Manual description

Although Linda is the youngest of the 13 sisters, she is, in many respects, the most mature. While the rest of her sisters aspire to be like their mother (which has lead to their vanity) Linda takes after her father, making her both hard working and good natured.

On her sixth birthday Linda's father gave her a bright green scarf, a present which she wears every day as a reminder of him, regardless of the weather. By a twist of fate, Linda's scarf has become home to a demon of vanity. The demon possess the power to deform any object it touches, by giving that object elasticity from the point of contact, regardless of its original substance. Linda has control over this demon, as long as she satisfies its desire to stretch things.

Linda is also very fond of her 'tomato monster cap', on which she has pinned her two favorite badges: Heckle (the sun) and Jeckle (the crescent moon). Despite how conceited her older sisters behave, Linda loves them all dearly and will go to any lengths to save them.

Story

In Stretch Panic, Linda is the protagonist who's goal is to rescue her twelve sisters from the Demons of Vanity.

At the start of the game Linda is seen taking home her sisters orders of cosmetics from the city to their home. On the journey back, she gets knocked over by a speeding truck that heads towards her home. The truck is revealed to belong to the Demons of Vanity, who possess Linda's sisters and transform them into monsters, as well as one of them possessing Linda's scarf. It is then Linda's quest to rescue and exorcise her sisters to save them all, with the help of her newfound grappling weapon in her possessed scarf.

Once Linda saves all her sisters from the Demons of Vanity, they parade home together in the credits.

Quotes

"Let's go!" (when entering a door)
"Get 'im!" (when extending the scarf, sometimes)
"Woohoo!" (when using either the scarf flip or torpedo attack)
"Eat this!" (when throwing an object)
"Ignition!" (when activating the scarf bomb)
"Ow!" (when hurt)
"Can't... go... on..." (when defeated)
"Cool!" (when defeating a boss)
"Yes, funky!" (when defeating a boss who has been exorcised)

Trivia

In prerelease screenshots, Linda's eyes weren't as detailed, her eye color instead being a flat blue.
The demon scarf's hand has a different number of fingers depending on the version of the game: in Stretch Panic and Freak Out it has three fingers and one thumb, but in Hippa Linda it has four fingers and one thumb. This change is reflected in the artwork for said releases.
- This may be because the total number of fingers it has in Stretch Panic/Freak Out adds to four, which is a number that holds superstition in some Asian nations; in the case of Japan, the pronunciation of four sounds similar to the word for death.
- The hand's thumb placement also implies it to be a right hand, though in some artwork it is flipped to instead be a left hand.