When he woke up the next morning, the first thing that Riku saw was that kid he'd met – the one who was still pretending to be Sora, even though he was a lot cooler – making his way into a door that Riku hadn't paid much attention to when he and the kid who'd helped him since Hollow Bastion had come into this room. Riku wondered what the other kid was doing, before he started hearing water running through the walls.
Climbing off of the pile of cushions he'd slept on, Riku grabbed his socks so he could put them back on, then turned as that other kid made his way back into the room they were sharing.
"Did you want to wash up next?" the kid asked, looking freshly dressed in a different set of clothes than he'd been wearing yesterday, and still scrubbing Sora's hair with the towel he'd draped around his neck. "We're going to be having breakfast soon," the kid said, after a long pause while he kept scrubbing Sora's hair. "So, did you want to wash up before that?"
"Sure," he said, making his way into what turned out to be the shower room to wash his hands.
Once their entire group was gathered together again, including the weirdoes that that kid pretending to be Sora had been traveling with since they met on that World with the talking cards, and that fat Queen that'd nearly gotten herself eaten by the Heartless when they first met, they all went out to eat. Breakfast with them was at least better than anything he'd had at Hollow Bastion, since there hadn't actually been anyone living there besides Maleficent, and he didn't think she actually ate.
Still, watching that kid order a stack of pancakes and then cover them in syrup was kind of funny. That was just what Sora always did, so maybe the weirdoes hanging around him weren't so dumb after all. They were still weird, though.
When the four of them all made it to the hangar where the kid had parked that ship he and old man Cid had been working on the last time he'd been to this World, Riku narrowed his eyes. It was weird, and if he told anyone else they would probably say he was crazy, but for a few seconds Riku could have sworn he heard someone singing…
~KH1~
Once they'd made it entirely out of Traverse Town's airspace, with Sarah laying on the triggers to clear large swaths of Heartless ships from their flightpath, she began to notice the distinct shape of another vehicle closing in on their position. A rather distinctive one, and all the moreso since nothing like it remotely belonged in space. Well, there's something you don't see every day, she mused, narrowing "her" eyes slightly as she considered the obstacle looming in front of them.
"Donald, I'm going to need you to do a strafing run, right down the center of that ship," she said, shifting her grip so that she could use the laser cannons she'd had installed for just these kinds of situations; the simpler blasters, after all, seemed specifically designed to work against the flimsier Heartless ships.
Gripping the triggers to the laser cannons as Donald sent them into a strafing run over the brightly-colored, high-masted ship that had appeared in front of them, Sarah targeted the base of the main mast. Opening fire with Fere's laser cannons, Sarah kept firing until the mast started listing dangerously to the right, and then returned her attention to Donald.
The drake looked more than a little frazzled, but Sarah figured that that was only natural, considering what she'd asked him to do.
"I'm going to need you to make one more pass over this thing," she said, nodding to nodding to Donald, after catching his eye to make sure she had his attention. "Slower this time, all right?"
Returning her attention to the laser cannons again, Sarah smirked as Donald sent Fere into a long, slow sweep from the damaged ship's bow to her stern, and Sarah rained down laser fire on the unfortunate shmucks who'd clearly been preparing what otherwise would have been a cannon salvo if she hadn't been quick enough on the draw to interrupt it.
"What're you going to do?" Riku asked, a grin clearly audible in his voice.
"Well, either someone comes out waving a white flag, or I target the munitions stores, and that ship and everyone on it burns like a fireworks show," she muttered, narrowing "her" eyes as she studied the deck of the three-masted ship in front of her as it cracked and blackened in places; it was only a matter of time before the decking itself began to catch fire.
What looked to be the captain of the ship seemed to realize that at the same time, because he came racing out onto the bow of the ship, waving a bright, white cloth over his head.
"There's your white flag," Riku said, sounding more than a little amused.
"Indeed," she said, glancing over at Donald to thank him for his help, and to ask him to bring Fere alongside the ship.
Said ship was already starting to drift slightly, with the last of its three masts shot down; though how in the hell that worked when they were both in space was something that Sarah would have dearly liked to know, but her curiosity wasn't a pressing matter at the moment.
"What're we going to do now?" Riku asked.
"We're going to be boarding them," she said, rising from the gunner's seat and moving to join the rest of her group.
The four of them all gathered at the back of their ship, and Sarah raised an eyebrow as she caught sight of Donald. The drake seemed more tense than she'd seen him thus far, and for a moment she wondered why, before making a mental note to talk to him when she could find the time. However, there were more pressing matters at hand than getting to the bottom of whatever Donald's current problem was.
As the four of them – five, if was inclined to count Kuromaru, tucked away as the little Shadow was inside her supply-pack – descended the boarding ramp, Sarah caught the distinct smoldering wood drifting around the deck. She would have wondered just how in the hell this place – an open-topped galleon in interstellar space – managed to maintain anything that even resembled a breathable atmosphere, but she'd seen and dealt with weirder.
Hell, even this had nothing on either Kuromaru or False-Ansem.
"Me ship! You fired on me ship!" the captain shouted; she figured he was the captain, anyway, since he was the most ostentatiously dressed of the men she'd seen scurrying about about on the deck.
Both when she'd closed with the ship itself, as well as when she'd been herding the gunners away from the cannons they'd previously been manning.
"What, you think I couldn't see your gunners getting set up?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at the man standing before her.
"Yes well, we're pirates!" the captain said, actually sounding indignant.
She chuckled. "Yeah, sure. Here's something to keep in mind: don't shoot anyone with more cannons than you have," Sarah said, narrowing "her" eyes as she caught sight of something fast and green shooting up from the interior of the ship.
The sound of that same someone imitating a rooster's crow prompted the captain who'd previously been speaking to her to whip around to face said newcomer.
"Peter Pan!"
"Did you really think I was just going to let you keep me down there, you codfish?!" the newcomer – Peter Pan, apparently; probably from some Disney movie or other, since she couldn't recall anyone in Final Fantasy by that name – demanded, a wild grin audible in his tone.
As Peter Pan stooped on the Captain, she and Riku dodged to the right, as Donald and Goofy dodged to the left.
"Watch this," Riku said, grinning as he held out his right hand, eyes narrowing in what looked like concentration.
Sarah raised an eyebrow at the sight of the pair of solid black figures that rose out of the decking in front of them.
"There's something you don't see every day," she muttered, as Riku sent them after the red-coated Captain.
Watching the ensuing battle, she took note of the way Peter Pan swooped and dove, assaulting the Captain with the small dagger that seemed to be his primary weapon. It was kind of a strange thing to see, and Sarah suspected that it was only the sheer incompetence of the Captain in combat, or at least swordplay, that was making the fight she was watching so one-sided.
Yes, there were certain advantages that flight provided in combat, but a competent, experienced, creative combatant would likely have been able to find a way to – if not negate those advantages entirely – at least leverage the fact that they possessed a full-sized sword as opposed to the tiny dagger that Peter Pan was brandishing at the Captain. Still, when the pair of shadowy doppelgangers that Riku had summoned jumped him, and Peter Pan took the opportunity to kick him in the head. The Captain slammed into the far wall and slumped into a heap at the base of it.
"Hey, thanks for the help!" Peter Pan called, hovering to a light landing in front of the four of them as they gathered together. "Peter Pan's the name!" he called, enthusiastically enough that Sarah was starting to think it was his default setting. "Come on, one of my friends was captured by these codfish. You can help me find her!"
"I guess I could do that," Sarah said, smiling slightly. "Considering how you got rid of that guy for us."
"Come on, you're not really volunteering us for this, are you?"
"You guys don't have to come along if you don't want to," she clarified, since Riku seemed to believe that she'd been volunteering on anyone's behalf but her own.
"I'll help, too!" Goofy called cheerfully, the way she'd come to expect that he would.
"What, do you just expect us to stand around and wait for you guys?" Riku asked, habitual smirk firmly in place again.
Sarah shrugged. "Do what you want; explore the ship, raid the galley, hang laughing-boy there from the prow by his underpants," that last she said with a jerk of "her" right thumb over at where the Captain lay sprawled in his finery.
Peter Pan laughed, speaking before Riku or Donald could respond. "That last one will have to wait," he said, grinning in a distinctly mischievous way. "If anyone's going to string that codfish up by his underpants, it's going to be me!"
"Hey!" Riku called, once the pair of them had turned and begun to make their way over to where Peter Pan had landed. "What's a galley?"
"Ship's kitchen," she called back, turning slightly so that he'd be able to hear her more clearly.
"Why don't they just call it a kitchen?" Riku asked, sounding confused and a bit annoyed, besides.
"You'd have to ask a sailor about that," she called back, already beginning to make her way over to where Peter Pan was standing.
The three of them searched the ship, looking for the friend that Peter had mentioned: a girl of about his age named Wendy, one of his traveling companions from this planet's version of London. It was kind of funny to think about, that somewhere distinctly non-terrestrial seemed to have more than a passing resemblance to somewhere on Earth. Sure, she knew that the planet Cody and McLeach both came from was more than likely to have a great deal of similarities to the Australian outback, but under the circumstances, Sarah knew that her chances of visiting that planet were only a bit short of absolute nil.
"Tink!" Peter called happily, as the orb of light chasing them seemed to resolve into what was either this planet's version of a fairy, or else some other kind of magical fauna.
"Friend of yours?" she asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked from Peter to the small, brightly-glowing figure.
"This is Tink," Peter said, grinning with what seemed to be his usual amount of good cheer, at least until the tiny figure – it looked like a particularly small woman, so it was more than likely to be female – crossed her arms and turned her back on him. "Aw, Tink, are you still sore about that?" Peter asked, though his tone suggested that he already knew what Tink didn't seem to want to talk about.
"Something you forget to mention?" she asked, eyebrow still arched, as Tink flew off.
Peter laughed. "Aw, Tink's always been like that," he said, waving a hand as though to toss the issue aside. "She gets sore about every girl I bring along with us," he chuckled. "She's most of the reason the Lost Boys don't have any girls in the group."
"Sounds kind of inconvenient," she said, as the pair of them continued on their way deeper into the ship, checking behind each of the doors they passed.
Opening the next door down the line, Sarah allowed herself to relax slightly as she caught sight of a young, red-haired girl in a pale-blue nightgown.
"Wendy!"
"Peter?" the girl – Wendy, apparently – called, as she rose back to her feet. "Peter Pan?"
"Yeah! Me and my new Lost Boys showed that codfish good," Peter said, laughing heartily, as Sarah raised an eyebrow.
"New Lost Boys?" she asked, feeling more than a little amused.
"Well, of course!" Peter said, grinning widely. "You're all going to come back to Neverland with me, right?"
"Depends on our schedule, but I think I could convince the others to pay a visit, at least," she said, knowing that Donald and Riku would take quite a bit of convincing, if they were even willing to consider the idea in the first place.
"You think they won't want to come?" Peter asked, looking more than a bit put out by the idea.
"We still have a lot of things we need to do," she said, folding "her" arms.
"Peter, there was a strange girl here," Wendy said, before she or Peter could continue along the line of their current conversation. "I tried to speak to her, but it was as though she had completely fallen asleep. She didn't budge an inch, no matter what I said."
"Where is she now?" Sarah asked, suspecting that she knew just who Wendy was talking about.
"Another stranger appeared in my room," Wendy said, shuddering briefly, and then hugging herself as she continued to speak. "It was so terrifying that I hid right away. And, when I could finally come back out again, the both of them were gone."
"Well, that might explain why we haven't been seeing either of them around here," she mused, knowing that Riku wouldn't be happy, once he found out what had probably happened to Kairi.
"That does sound scary," Peter said, face and manner becoming more serious than she'd seen from him before.
"Sounds like someone me and mine have encountered before."
"Who?" Peter asked, his attention snapping to her.
"She goes by Maleficent," Sarah said, knowing that forewarned was forearmed in cases like this; and in this case in particular, it could only help to have more people in the know than not. "She's a fairy, and a really nasty one, too," she said, giving what physical descriptions she could recall from both the games, and the few times that she herself had had the chance to get a look at the fairy woman in person. "Do either of you know how to handle fairies?" she asked, not wanting to leave anyone who wasn't attempting to harm her or her people in the lurch if she could avoid it.
"Well, I know that, if you say you don't believe in fairies, somewhere there's a poor fairy that dies," Wendy said, looking more than a little uncertain.
Possible… but; she scoffed. "Yeah, she'd probably laugh in your face and set you on fire, if you tried that with her."
"How dreadful!" Wendy gasped.
"Yeah," she said, nodding. "She's most of the reason we're out here doing this."
"Hmm, maybe you won't be able to come to Neverland right now," Peter said, folding his arms and frowning.
"Yeah, I don't think Riku's going to want to do anything but go looking for her, once he finds out what happened," she mused.
The four of them made their way back topside again after that, meeting up with the remainder of their group, and she quickly pulled Riku aside while Donald and Goofy had words of their own with Peter and Wendy.
"Kairi's here?!" Riku exclaimed, having clearly latched onto the first part of what she'd said, to the exclusion of everything else.
And yeah, that had been pretty much what she'd been expecting from the kid, but that didn't make it much less annoying.
"Well, she was here, at least until Maleficent showed up," she said, and Riku clenched his fists. "We should head back to Traverse Town as soon as we can," she continued, glancing briefly at Donald and Goofy, before turning her attention back to Riku. "There's a few things we're going to need, before we go rescue her."
Riku seemed satisfied by that, insofar as anyone could be when one of their friends was missing and under the control of an as-yet-undeclared enemy, and so the pair of them met up with Donald and Goofy on their way back to Fere. Each of them ready to leave, and each for their own reasons.
"Take care," Wendy said, looking up at the ramp where the four of them had all gathered once more. "I hope your friend is all right."
"Thanks," she said, then raised an eyebrow as Peter began making his way over to where the four of them were standing.
There was an expression of uncertainty on his face, but he seemed to be directing it more at his companion than anyone else. "Tink says she wants to come with you," Peter said, looking from the fluttering form beside his head to the ramp that she and hers had started making their way up.
"That's nice of her," Sarah said, tilting "her" head slightly. "Did she tell you why?"
"She says that you're going to be facing some monsters that only she's going to be able to help you defeat," Peter said, looking around as the brightly-glowing form of what seemed to be the newest member of their group fluttered over to hover beside "her" right shoulder.