Chapter disclaimer: the song "Kyrie Eleison", sung by Mr. Mister, and "Treasure Sniper", sung by Totani Kimito, do not belong to me. Just like the worlds of Kingdom Hearts, Assassin's Creed, Prototype, or any of the X Vs. Capcom games.
XxX
When she had finished organizing her thoughts, pinning them to paper so that they couldn't slip away or shape-change on her, Sarah washed her hands for the final time. At least until I end up having to pee again, she mused, with a put-upon sigh and a roll of "her" eyes. Flicking the excess water from her fingers twice, the way she had always done, Sarah grabbed the hand towel and dried them with her usual thoroughness.
Opening the door to find Riku still standing on the other side, she gave him the best "Sora smile" that she could muster. "Bathroom's all yours," she said.
He laughed. "Thanks, Sora. But that wasn't why I was waiting for you."
Before he could say anything else, though, Kairi came around the corner, saw them both together, and smiled widely.
"Good, you're done," she said, coming over to grab both "his" right hand and Riku's left. "I found the sunblock, and I thought, since we're all going to be spending the day out in the sun, we should put some on now so we don't get sunburn when we go out there today." Kairi turned back to look at "him". "I'm still surprised you thought of this, Sora," she said to "him" over her shoulder.
Sarah gave the other girl an amused, whimsical smile. "Just because I don't usually plan ahead doesn't mean I can't," she said, with what she hoped was a convincing tone.
Something indefinable passed over Kairi's face, but it was gone before Sarah could make any sense of it.
"I guess you're right," Kairi said at last, something Sarah couldn't define still lingering in her eyes.
It was almost as if she was starting to have suspicions, but she was doing her best to suppress them; clearly, Sarah needed to work on her acting. They arrived back in the kitchen then, and Kairi headed over to the table while Riku stopped and pulled out one of the chairs to sit down. After taking a moment to gauge Kairi's reaction, something she was fairly but not entirely sure that the other girl hadn't noticed, Sarah settled herself down in a chair right beside the one that Riku was using
When Kairi picked up the bottle of sunblock, or suntan lotion or whatever you preferred to call it, she waited and watched as the younger girl slathered on the lotion and rubbed it into her skin; all the while trying not to think of any lines from "Silence of the Lambs". She hadn't even seen the movie, but enough of the quotes had reached memetic status on the Internet that she could recite them from memory if she wanted to. Here and now, though, wasn't the time or the place for that kind of thing. Besides the fact that she hadn't yet seen evidence of any electronics more complicated than a light bulb, Sarah wasn't about to do something so blatantly out-of-character for Sora as to start spouting quotes from horror movies that neither of them had seen.
When the three of them had finished putting the sunblock on all of the parts of their skin that would be exposed while they were all playing on the beach together – and hopefully not getting into a fight with any psychotic Radam Tekkamen – she mused, with a quickly-smothered smirk, Riku was the first out of his seat.
"Well, now that none of us are going to be getting sunburned, let's get going." The silver-haired boy shot her a look, and Sarah resisted the urge to either smirk or roll her eyes at him; wasn't likely to be something Sora would do, and she'd acted unlike Sora enough that she suspected Kairi might have noticed, so she was trying to act as honestly Sora-like as she knew how.
She couldn't really gauge her own effectiveness, however, since that would involve paying more strict attention to Kairi's reactions, and that was as likely to give her away as anything. So Sarah just tried to stay as aware of her own reactions as she could, matching them as closely to what she knew of Sora's as was possible. They soon left the house, heading out the back door and down to the beach.
It wasn't the place where she'd first landed on this world, but it was clearly an important place in the grand scheme of things. The three boats bobbing gently in the current made it obvious that this was the first step on their trip to Destiny Islands, and the first step on the long, winding road that would end at the gates of Kingdom Hearts. And, preferably with her finding a way to get back home.
"Geeze, Sora, are you singing again?"
Riku's sudden, incredulous query startled Sarah back to the present moment, reminding her of just where she was; and who she was pretending to be.
"I think it was a nice song," Kairi said, and turned to face "Sora" more squarely. "Do you think you could sing it again?"
"Well..." Blistering Hellfreid, she groused inwardly, gently shoving the unattended middle boat into the surf. At least it wasn't J-pop or something like that, she mused, hiding a small smile by tilting her head just that much farther down; the other two probably thought she was just looking down at her boat, or rather that "he" was. "All right, Kairi. If you really want me to."
Given the fact that she'd pretty much memorized the song in question, along with a few dozen others and snatches of not-even-she-knew how many more, that wasn't such a tall order. Calling up the melody in her memory, Sarah allowed herself to smile just a bit. This might not have been something that Sora would do, and yeah there were probably going to be consequences for this little indulgence of hers, but this was something harmless that she enjoyed doing.
And, who knew; maybe the consequences wouldn't be all that bad.
"The wind blows hard against this mountainside," she sang, pushing Sora's boat out into the surf to launch it. "Across the sea into my soul."
Holding the last note for a moment, Sarah settled herself into the gently-rocking boat, taking a deep breath as she tried to find a comfortable rhythm for rowing. Finding it, she continued: "It reaches in to where I cannot hide, setting my feet upon the road."
This might not have been her native world, and might in fact have been the last place in the 'verse she had ever expected to end up, but she was here now, so she was going to try to make what differences she could. "My heart is old, it holds my memories; my body burns a gemlike flame."
Sarah wondered for a moment just what was going to happen two or three days hence, when this world that they were all standing on was consumed by some freakish, giant space anomaly, but then she decided not to stress herself out about it. Whatever happened would happen, and worrying about it would only make her more jumpy and prone to overreaction; not a good thing when she was at least trying to maintain a passable cover-story. "Somewhere between the soul and soft machine, is where I find myself again."
It was kind of strange, Sarah reflected; she didn't know much about rowing aside from what she'd seen on TV, but she seemed to be doing pretty well here and now. Then again, she was in Sora's body, so it was probably Sora's muscle-memory at work. "Kyrie Eleison, down the road that I must travel. Kyrie Eleison, through the darkness of the night. Kyrie Eleison, where I'm going will you follow? Kyrie Eleison, on a highway in the night."
Sarah wondered when they were going to reach those small islands that the first game began on; the game itself gave no indication of travel-time to or from their meeting place. That's the trouble with games like this, she groused, with a mental roll of her eyes. No one ever thinks about what could happen if it became real.
"When I was young, I thought of growing old. Of what my life would mean to me." Sarah almost had to laugh at herself for that thought: the reason that no one thought about any kind of game becoming real was that it never happened; except, ironically enough, in certain types of RPGs.
"Would I have followed down my chosen road, or only wished what I could be?" Sarah wished for a moment that she could ask how long their journey was going to take without the risk of compromising her cover, if not blowing it entirely. Sure "Kyrie Eleison" wasn't the longest song that she could have chosen to sing, and in fact it was nearly all over but the chorus, but she would have liked to know how much time she had before they all arrived at their intended destination.
"Kyrie Eleison, down the road that I must travel. Kyrie Eleison, through the darkness of the night. Kyrie Eleison, where I'm going, will you follow? Kyrie Eleison, down a highway in the night." As she continued to row, breathing deeply between each stroke so that she could maintain a steady rhythm, Sarah caught her first glimpse of the Destiny Islands. It looked like they were only a few more minutes out. that was good, since she only needed a few more minutes to finish the song, in any case.
"Kyrie Eleison, down the road that I must travel. Kyrie Eleison, through the darkness of the night. Kyrie Eleison, where I'm going, will you follow? Kyrie Eleison, down a highway in the night." She hadn't heard Kairi singing along during her last repetition of the chorus, or maybe she just hadn't been paying enough attention to notice that she had, but in any case the two of them were coming to the end of their impromptu duet.
The three of them were closing in on the main island, and Sarah thought that she would have just enough time to finish the song before they all reached the shore.
"Kyrie Eleison, down the road that I must travel. Kyrie Eleison, through the darkness of the night. Kyrie Eleison, where I'm going, will you follow? Kyrie Eleison, down a highway in the night."
As her and Riku's boats bumped gently against each other while she continued to guide Sora's boat up to the dock, Sarah breathed deeply to steady herself. For a few seconds Sarah wondered if she was supposed to lash the boat to something, or tie it up somehow. She'd never seen anything like that in the game itself, but then the boats in the game had been nothing but one more piece of pre-rendered scenery in a game full of the stuff.
"I never knew you could sing so well, Sora," Riku said, as he carefully climbed out of his boat and up onto the dock.
"Well, I'm just full of surprises," she said, concentrating more on getting up and out of Sora's boat than anything else.
This was something that she had never done before, and she didn't want to screw something up because she hadn't been paying attention. When she had made it up onto the dock that bordered the water, thankfully without falling in, Sarah took a moment to discreetly take in both her new surroundings and the people around her. Kairi was giving her that unreadable look again; something Sarah didn't yet have enough personal experience to interpret yet.
She was probably going to end up getting just that kind of personal experience before this whole debacle was over with, but for now she was pretty much flying blind.
"You're not just going to stand there all day, are you, Sora?" Kairi asked, once again standing a bit closer than Sarah was really comfortable with.
Not that she didn't like Kairi or anything, since given she'd seen in-game and everything she was seeing now it was pretty obvious that she was the kind of genuinely nice person that Sarah hanging around so much, but having anyone standing so close to her made Sarah feel like she was boxed in; it made her feel like she couldn't breathe if it went on for too long, though she usually tended to lash out before it got that far. She didn't know if Sora had the same kind of issues with crowding as she did, but given all the things she had seen him put up with in-game, she was personally inclined to doubt it.
"Sorry," she said, working a cheerful expression for the two of them. "I guess I just got a little lost in thought back there."
"Well, I'm glad you managed to find your way back, then," Kairi said, with a small but clearly amused smile.
From all that she had seen of Kairi in-game, Sarah had formed the impression of someone who was brave, kind, loyal, decent, and gentle. Sure, the cutscenes had hinted that she had least the beginnings of a sense of humor, but Sarah hadn't really gotten to know the other girl very well; what with the planet exploding and the Heartless attacking and all, but Sarah was starting to understand just why Sora liked her so much.
Really, the only people who didn't seem to like her were the rabid Riku x Sora 'shippers, and anyone with half a brain knew that rabid 'shippers of any stripe were hopeless morons in desperate need of a reality-check. Of course, it wasn't like rabid anti-shippers were any better; really, anyone who took the love-lives of fictional characters so seriously that they were willing to fight about it really needed to look into getting a life.
As she followed Kairi and Riku out onto the shore of the largest of the Destiny Islands for the first time, Sarah considered what her first order of business was going to be. She already knew how Sora had done things, and she wasn't particularly interested in repeating Sora's actions completely during however long she was going to be stuck here, so Sarah decided that she might as well begin taking some initiative now as later.
"Where are you going off to, Sora?"
She smiled. "Well, we still need to get the rest of the parts for the raft, don't we?"
"So what, are you trying to tell me that you've actually developed a work ethic now?" Riku asked, giving her a sidelong grin.
"I know, shocking isn't it?" she returned with a smirk.
Riku looked like someone had just taken a swing at him, or else like he'd face-planted into a wall. It was really pretty funny, but she knew better than to laugh. That wouldn't be like Sora at all.
No one else said anything, and the three of them made their way onto the Destiny Islands. She figured that, since Riku and Kairi already knew what "Sora" was planning to do, she might as well go and do it. Besides, checking her reactions again might make Kairi suspicious, or at least more suspicious than she might already be.
Taking a moment to recall just where all of that stuff they had wanted actually was, Sarah let a brief smile cross "her" face when Kairi spoke up.
"Remember, Sora: we need two logs, a rope, and some cloth to finish our raft!"
"Thanks, Kairi," she said, with a slightly wider smile.
Having remembered at last where the three targets of her now-self-appointed fetch-quest actually were, decided that since she didn't actually want to be hauling logs all over the place – gameplay mechanics had made this job so much easier – she would go for the lighter and more easily portable objects first. That in mind, she made her way to the ladder that she had used so many times and yet never used at all. It had been a long time since she had played any of the games in the Kingdom Hearts series, and also awhile since she had watched the Hellfire Commentaries playthrough of the first game, but things were starting to come back to her the more time she spent retracing Sora's in-game steps.
Probably just like riding a bike, she figured.
Passing around the curved, wooden wall that wrapped around the large rock – really more of a giant boulder, or a small, rocky hill – she continued on her way to the comparatively large wooden platform where she and all of the other gamers had met up with KH!Tidus. briefly, she wondered if Spoony would hate KH!Tidus as much as he hated FF!Tidus; probably not, though, both since you didn't spend nearly as much time with KH!Tidus as you did with the FF variant, and because you had the opportunity to beat the ever-loving crap out of him pretty much at whim.
When she finally made it to the platform, though it was really more like someone's deck sans the awning now that she thought about it, Sarah found that KH!Tidus was not in fact making those ridiculous swinging motions with that stick he used as a mêlée-weapon. At least, he wasn't making them constantly, to the point where he resembled a fisherman on crack; she supposed it came of not being an NPC with limited AT anymore.
"Hey Sora, you feel lucky today?"
And yet he's still as predictable as ever, she mused, holding back a smirk through sheer force of will; she'd never known Sora to smirk, so she knew that she couldn't do it around anyone who knew him. At least, not if she didn't want to risk freaking them out and possibly blowing her cover. She could probably smirk all she wanted to around Riku, though.
"I think I'll have to get back to you about that," she said, picking up the coil of rope and settling it over her neck and left shoulder, leaving her right arm with the freedom of movement she was going to need if she was going to get the rest of this fetch-quest done.
"Kairi's putting you to work already, huh?" Tidus asked, laughing.
"Yeah, she's a real slave-driver," Sarah said, before she could stop herself.
Luckily for her, all Tidus did in response to that little quip was to laugh a bit harder. Sarah knew that she really had to break her habit of making those sarcastic little asides, at least while she was on this island with so many people who knew Sora to some greater or lesser degree.
Another reason to look forward to meeting Donald and Goofy: she wouldn't have to live up to anyone else's preconceived notions. For the moment, however, she would have to watch her reactions a lot more carefully if she was going to make it to the end of the world without being caught out.
"See you later, Sora!" Tidus called out, once Sarah had finished getting the rope settled over her shoulder and hence started to move out.
"Yeah, later, Tidus," she called back over her own shoulder with a smile, taking care to pronounce the name the way that KH!Wakka had.
She'd always pronounced it 'tide-us' rather than 'teed-us', but she figured that now wasn't really the time for changing things like that up; she'd be doing plenty of that once she made it off-world. Since the kid himself didn't correct her pronunciation, Sarah figured she had gotten it right, so she didn't break stride as she made her way back down to ground-level. By the time she'd made it to the bottom of the ladder, the rope she was carrying had begun to chafe her neck.
Removing it with a soft, relived sigh, she set the still-coiled rope down by the small, artificial pond that sat near the Seaside Shack. Wonder if I'll find that Save Point, she mused, laughing softly at her own whimsy. Like she was going to walk in there and find a circle of pulsing, rippling green-and-white light, one that was large enough for her to stand in and would heal all her wounds if she did so. Not that she actually had any wounds at the moment, but it was the principle of the thing.
However, for the moment, she had more important things to do than look for something that probably wasn't even there in the first place.
Making her way past the coil of rope she'd already lay down, Sarah climbed up the second plank-bridge and make her way over to the short ladder. Climbing that, she made her way over to the comparatively small, hollowed-out space next to the rocky hill; she wondered for a moment just who had built it and what it had been used for, but then she decided to shelve her curiosity since there wasn't much chance of her getting an answer before the whole world-shattering-kaboom bit, and by then she would have more important things to think about. Besides, it was probably just a clubhouse or something.
As she folded up the cloth that had been hanging on the wall to make it easier to carry, Sarah thought fondly of the way that these kinds of things would vanish into her inventory with no more than a simple touch; no doubt about it, game-mechanics had made these annoying fetch-quests a hell of a lot easier.
Of course, that meant that carrying all the Hi-Potions and Ethers she was going to want when she made it into Traverse Town and the KH'Verse in general was going to be a bitch and a half.
Still, all of those considerations could be addressed later, when she actually had some time to herself. For the moment, she had a fetch-quest to complete, and some sparring to get in if she was going to keep people from becoming suspicious of her. She also had a date to curb-stomp Riku, but business before pleasure; smirking faintly, she set the folded cloth down on top of the rope and turned away to head for the beach. Realizing that she had begun to sing "Treasure Sniper" under her breath, Sarah clicked her teeth together in annoyance and sighed.
She really needed to stop doing things that were so out-of-character for Sora; it was bound to get her in trouble sooner or later. She couldn't afford to let herself get caught up in the moment, or else she was likely to end up giving herself away without meaning to, and perhaps even without noticing at first. Of course, all of those were probably good reasons for her to avoid fighting Riku, since she and Sora not only had wildly divergent fighting-styles, but she tended to get a little over-enthusiastic when she was in the heat of battle. There was a chance that Riku, even as unobservant as he was, would notice something off about "Sora" if they sparred.
On the other hand, since it was just going to be a spar as opposed to a real fight, Sarah wouldn't be using the same kinds of moves that she'd have been breaking out if she'd honestly been trying to beat Riku into submission. So it wasn't that likely that she would end up hurting him too much. Besides, it wasn't like Riku took too much notice of what was going on around him; hell, the only thing that was likely to come of her pounding him into submission was that he'd be a little more pissy when Maleficent got her hooks into him, and given the fact that she was going to kick his ass at Hollow Bastion anyway, that probably didn't matter.
With the first of the two logs she needed tucked under her left arm, Sarah made her way back to the growing pile where she had stashed the rest of the materials she had gathered thus far. Dropping the log off with a dull 'thunk', Sarah continued on her way past the shack and up to the plank-bridge that connected the relatively dinky main island with the speck-of-a-barely-larger-than-an-MMA-arena island that Riku was standing on. Well, lounging on really, since she'd seen him on that tree during that post-or-during-fetch-quest-cutscene that she had triggered when she'd made her way out to said itty-bitty island in the game. Still, the fact that she had switched up the order of the events that she had gone through before those many times in-game just might mean that she wouldn't find Riku lounging around on that tree; she remembered game-Riku saying that he had already delivered all the stuff he'd been asked to gather up to game-Kairi, but that was after game-Sora had been caught napping by both the latter and the former.
Without that, there was a definite possibility that Riku was still out there gathering whatever miscellaneous items Kairi had sent him out to get. She suspected that one or more of them might have been logs, just like Sora himself had been asked to get. It fit with what she'd seen during the opening cutscene of the game, the one that she had probably thoroughly FUBARed by now.
She wondered briefly just what it was that Riku had been asked to get, then decided to shelve her curiosity since she knew that it was never going to be satisfied. True, she could ask, but Riku would probably make fun of "him" for it, and then he wouldn't tell her anyway. Best not to bring it up in the first place, she decided.
The sound of shoes scuffling across sand let Sarah know that she wasn't alone on the small island, so she glanced over "her" shoulder to see who it was.
"Oh, hey Riku?" she said, flashing the silver-haired boy a brief smile before turning back to her work.
She'd just spotted the last of the logs that Sora had been sent to fetch, and she wasn't about to let herself be distracted. Riku's footsteps paused for a moment, while she continued on her way over to the log that she that she had spotted when she'd first onto this island; or really, when she had first played the game that this island was a part of. Riku's footsteps started back up when she'd almost gotten to the log, and as she picked the thing up, Sarah turned to look over "her" left shoulder.
"You want to talk, Riku?" she asked, taking a shot in the dark, even as she hefted the last log up under that same arm.
"How did you know it was me, Sora?" the sliver-haired boy asked, sounding surprised enough that Sarah almost wanted to laugh.
That wouldn't have been very Sora-like, so she restrained herself. Turning around so that she wouldn't get neck-cramps from trying to have a conversation with someone who was standing behind her, Sarah couldn't resist the urge to smile, just a bit.
"Well, I didn't think Kairi would be coming over to collect this stuff personally," she said, still wearing a slight smile. "She seemed kind of busy."
"That wasn't what I was talking about, Sora," Riku said, folding his arms and looking more closely at "him". "How did you know I was coming at all? I didn't say anything."
Hiding her chuckle by coughing into her fist, Sarah quickly wiped the smile off Sora's face when Riku peered more closely at "him".
"Well, are you going to tell me, or not?" the boy asked, getting in just a bit closer than Sarah was truly comfortable with.
First off, get out of my face, Sarah didn't say, moving back slightly, even as she tucked the log more securely under "her" left arm and prepared to move out. "Walk with me a bit, and I'll show you," she said, looking back over "her" shoulder at Riku again.
"All right," the boy in question said, though he looked a bit dubious.
The two of them made their way off the small island in silence, but that only lasted for the first few steps before Riku decided that he'd had enough.
"I don't get what I'm supposed to be seeing her, Sora," he said impatiently.
"You're not supposed to be seeing anything, Riku," she returned easily, as the two of them continued on their way off the small island.
"You're not making any sense," he said, sounding all the more irritated by what she had just said.
Well, at least I know he wasn't just being dense for story-purposes, she mused, with a soft sigh. "It's not something you're going to figure out just by watching what I do, Riku," she said, looking back over "her" shoulder at him.
"What do you mean by that? You're still not making any sense, Sora!"
"Shh," she said, hushing him with her right hand. "Just listen."
Pacing a circle around Riku, Sarah shifted the log in her grip to relieve some of the strain on her left arm.
"You heard me coming?" Riku blinked, staring incredulously down at her feet as Sarah returned to her starting point.
She chuckled. "Never disregard input from any of your senses, Riku. It's always something you don't notice that gets you."
With that minor bit of hard-earned wisdom imparted, and Riku looking like someone had just slapped him with a wet fish, Sarah made her way across the wood-plank bridge and back onto the main island. Riku followed silently, and as she reviewed her performance from the last few minutes, Sarah cursed herself silently.
Just couldn't resist the urge to show off, now could you? Fucking moron; the hell are you going to do if they find you out? Of course, the rate you're going, it's not going to be a matter of if so much as a matter of when, now isn't it? Tossing the last log to the ground with a bit more force than was perhaps strictly necessary, Sarah exhaled soundlessly. She really needed to remember to stop doing things that could compromise her cover.
No matter how natural she found it to be able to pick out the sound of footsteps approaching her, she had to remember not to chide the person who had been trying to sneak up on her for their absolute lack of anything resembling stealth training. Not everyone had a Dad with friends in Special Forces and the Navy SEALs, after all. She was pretty sure that no one here did, at least.
Hell, she didn't know if anyone here knew what armed forces were, let alone had any of them.
A punch to her right shoulder startled Sarah out of her contemplation, and she quickly bent her legs slightly, preparing to dodge the next blow while her hands came up to throw her own punches. Or just to throw her opponent so that she would be able to beat them down more easily.
"Geeze, Sora," Riku said, laughing as his eyes roved to take in her stance. "You'd think you wanted to fight right here and now." He subsided a bit, but he was still smirking. "Tell you what: you get all of that stuff delivered to Kairi, then come meet me out on the island. And, when I win, you can teach me how to do that trick you just did." Riku was smirking by the end of his little speech, and even with the fact that her reaction – both of them, really – would have given her away to a more observant person, Sarah still had to bite back the answering smirk that wanted to spread across her own face.
This was why she enjoyed dealing with Riku: he was dense enough not to take any notice of the ways she was acting different than Sora.
"And what happens if I win?" she asked, cocking her head slightly.
Normally, if some arrogant pinhead like Riku so obviously was challenged her to a fight, she'd mock them a bit in her counter-challenge, and then laugh at the look on their face. Then, of course, she would proceed to kick their asses ten ways from next Sunday using her no-holds-barred-everything-is-permitted fighting style.
Probably while taunting them, depending on their level of combat experience compared to her.
Still, as things stood now, she wasn't as confident as she usually was. There were two major reasons for that, the first being that Sora's body didn't have any of the ingrained muscle-memory or flexibility that she had trained into her own. Sure, she knew from experience that Sora had his own set of muscle-memories, but she didn't know if any of them related to combat. Really, from what she'd seen in-game, Sora seemed to be more of a brawler than anything; at least, he showed no evidence of formal combat training in the first game.
She didn't quite remember the second or third games well enough to comment on the evolution of Sora's skills, and she hadn't played many of the later games, either because they hadn't come out for the PS2 or PS3 yet, or because she hadn't gotten to that point in the story yet. In fact, she reflected with a bit of morbid amusement, she hadn't even finished Riku's story in the second game.
Laughing softly to herself, Sarah hefted the coiled rope and settled it over her neck and left shoulder.
She'd stopped halfway through Riku's story in Re: Chain of Memories because she'd been fed up with all of the level-grinding she'd had to do to keep from getting killed by the various bosses in that game. And then Tatsunoko vs. Capcom had come out, followed closely by Kamen Rider Dragon Knight the game. Then, when she had just started to get tired of those games – not an easy prospect when there was a new ending to see for each character in both games – the PS3 system had come out, along with a new library of games. Foremost among them, at least in her mind, had been Assassin's Creed and not long after that Assassin's Creed II.
In fact, the only reason that she'd started playing the first Kingdom Hearts game again at all was the fact that she had never managed to create Ultima Weapon from her visits to the Moogles' item workshop.
Of course, under the circumstances she could see how it might have been a good thing that she'd loaded up this particular game at this particular time. If she'd ended up falling into Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom, either of the Assassin's Creed games she owned, or even – God forbid – Prototype... Well, she'd have a hell of a time getting back out again.
With the cloth now safely tucked under Sora's left arm, Sarah made her way past the old shack that might or might not have a save-point in it, past the bridge on the other side that lead to the islet/arena-where-she-might-or-might-not-kick-Riku's-ass, and over to the large wooden gate that she had always found Kairi in front of during this particular fetch-quest. Sure enough, there she stood; she even waved as "he" came striding up.
"I'm glad to see you're taking this so seriously now, Sora," the other girl said, with a teasing giggle. "Now, all you have left to get are the last two logs."
"On it," Sarah said, resisting the urge to snap off a casual sort of salute. "I'll be right back."
As she turned and made to leave, Sarah could almost feel Kairi's scrutiny on her. She wondered for a moment just what that could mean, but then she decided that it probably wasn't that important. Even if Kairi had started to take note of the inevitable discrepancies between her behavior and Sora's – which was pretty much a given since she wasn't nearly as dense as Riku – most people would just figure that someone was having an off-day, or just showing a new side of themselves. Depending on the circumstances involved.
It took a certain kind of person to add two plus two and come up with twenty-two, after all.
Hefting the logs up under both of Sora's arms, Sarah paused for a moment as she felt yet another set of eyes resting on her. She knew who they belonged to, of course, but she was at least mildly curious to know what it was he wanted.
"Glad to see you're almost finished, Sora," Riku said, a cocky smirk spreading over the lower half of his face. "That means you can teach me whatever it was that you just did to find me out back there."
He sounded like he thought he'd already won, like the fight he'd challenged her to was a mere formality; like someone who thought all he had to do to win was just show up. He had no idea who he was dealing with. Sure, she might not have the strength, stamina, or muscle-memory that she had spent so long training herself to have, but that really only mattered for the more complicated or "showy" moves in her repertoire.
She was still perfectly capable of striking at weak-points, kicking people in inconvenient or extremely unpleasant places, throwing someone's ass all over the place, or paralyzing an opponent with strikes directly to the nerves or pressure-points. Riku was looking a bit uneasy now, and since Sarah could still feel her "your ass is mine now, bitch" smile stretching Sora's lips, she knew just why that was.
"Looking forward to it," was all she said, turning her attention back to the path she had to travel and continuing on her way.
Now that she'd made her resolution to pound Riku into the sand and grind her bootheels into the back of his skull, even if only in a metaphorical sense, Sarah almost felt like whistling.
The only way she'd been able to beat Riku on Destiny Islands was to do a fair bit of level-grinding beforehand, and that had been on her second playthrough; the people at Hellfire Commentaries had never managed to do that, but then NTom64 hadn't done and level-grinding during the previous part of their own playthrough, and The Helldragon had stated later that he didn't bother with level-grinding at all. She thought that it was kind of interesting, how someone didn't bother with something that felt like an essential part of her gaming experience, but then not a lot of people were completionests to the same degree that she was.
And, not everyone enjoyed curb-stomping their opponents into the ground, either.
Meeting up with Kairi again, Sarah smiled as she turned over the logs that she had gathered to the other girl. She didn't get anything for it, but then she hadn't been expecting to; that Hi-Potion that Kairi had somehow managed to get her hands on had just been a game mechanic, the same way that Riku had been able to hold a nigh-infinite amount of Potions in those stupid-looking parachute-pants of his. Just something to make completing a fetch-quest or beating the crap out of an idiot that much more rewarding.
Leaving Kairi behind, with only a few words of thanks from the other girl, as well as a reminder that the three of them would be setting sail tomorrow, Sarah went off in search of Riku. She'd already made up her mind to kick his ass by any means possible, that she didn't have to worry so much about her cover since Riku was both dense enough not to notice something that was right in front of him – witness his being so willing to trust Maleficent – and he also had the worst case of tunnel-vision that she had ever seen in anyone, video game character or not.
So, he wasn't likely to notice that she was using moves that Sora never had, or if he did, he was likely to be too angry to consider the full implications of his "old friend's" new fighting-style. She'd have to watch the trash-talk a bit more than she usually bothered to, however, if she didn't end up having to cut it out entirely depending on the intensity of the fight. She couldn't say anything too vulgar or perverse, or make any disparaging comments about Riku's mother, or threaten him with sudden and/or violent dismemberment, disfigurement, or death or death during the course of their fight; even someone with his kind of tunnel-vision could still notice when someone he'd known for as long as he was implied to have known Sora was being uncharacteristically aggressive, after all.
It would have been really annoying to be found out by someone with the degree of tunnel-vision displayed by first-game Riku, as well, so she would still have to be on her guard to some degree.
Making her way back over to the bridge, "Her" arms free at last of the burdens that she had been carrying, Sarah took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she crossed over to the small islet/arena where she and Riku were going to have it out. Swinging "her" arms and walking a bit more loosely than she usually did, both to limber herself up for combat and to get what little extra experience she could with the way Sora moved, Sarah made it out to the islet where Riku was waiting.
"I was starting to think that you weren't going to show up," the silver-haired – and damn if that wasn't as weird to think of as it was to see – said with a smirk, obviously goading.
She smirked right back. "Oh, I wouldn't miss this for the world."
Riku looked thrown for a few moments, obviously not having expected that kind of a response; he regained his mental footing pretty quickly, though. Sarah was almost impressed.
"I found your sword, too," he said, with that same tone he'd used before. "Really careless of you, to leave it lying around the way you did."
It was almost cute, the way he was trying so hard to get a rise out of her; like a poodle yapping at a tank: amusing in its futility.
"Who says I need a sword to beat you?"
That wiped the smirk right off his face, but more than that, it seemed to make him angry. And, as she had always told her opponents after she had finished beating them down: you never wanted to let your adversary make you angry. If you let that happen, after all, you'd lost the fight even before the first punch was thrown.
She kind of wondered if Riku was going to get the lesson before or after she had pummeled him about the head and shoulders a few times. She supposed that now was as good a time as ever to find that out.
"You know, we could stand here exchanging witty banter all day," she said, just as Riku had opened his mouth to try flinging another barb her way. "Or, I could just pummel you into the sand and the two of us could get on with our lives." Oh, he really didn't like that one; this was going to be fun.
Catching the wooden sword he threw at her, Sarah side-stepped his head-long charge and stuck out "her" left leg to trip him in passing. Sprawled out on the sand, almost flat on his belly, the look Riku gave her was pure, incredulous fury.
She smirked, leaning in, but only slightly so she wouldn't run the risk of being grabbed and pummeled herself; remote as it admittedly was. "Well, that was predictable. You have anything new to show me, or should we just call this fight right here, right now?"
He really didn't like that one; back-stepping to get herself out of range of his swipes, Sarah began to observe his style of attack. She wanted to see if there were any weaknesses that she could exploit, or a pattern that she would be able to predict after some strict observation. Naturally, Riku – impatient and inexperienced with real combat as he was – took her actions entirely out of context.
"Don't tell me you're giving up already, Sora!"
He let his guard down for those few, crucial moments. And then he folded up very nicely around the tip of the wooded sword that she rammed into his stomach. He also made the most interesting aghngh sound when he did; Sarah almost had to laugh.
There was something she was supposed to be remembering about that, though; she was having a bit too much fun to recall whatever-it-was properly at the moment, but for some reason Sarah thought that she should go a bit easier on the in-combat taunting. There was also a reason that she shouldn't just burst out singing "Treasure Sniper" during the lulls of something that could only be charitably called combat, but that was a matter for another time.
"You know, if this had been live steel we were fighting with right now, I'd have probably either just disemboweled you, or even mortally wounded you right there," she said, smirking slightly at the expression of pure and utter "what the fuck?" spreading across Riku's still slightly-rounded face. Her smirk widened slightly as she tapped him lightly on the neck with what might have charitably been called the edge of her wooden sword. "And now you're dead."
"Wha- what was that, Sora?" Riku demanded.
"I'm sorry, you just left this big, huge opening that seemed to scream "attack"," she said glibly.
"What?" he demanded again, climbing back to his feet with his left hand over his stomach.
He was still stuck on that; he must have been slow.
"You let your guard down." Speaking more slowly and clearly, both so he could at least try to get what she was saying, and because it really seemed to piss him off. "That's really not a good idea there, sport."
Riku's face twisted in something resembling the closest that whiney, emo dumbass could get to anger. He was probably going for some kind of intimidation or something like that, but given the fact that she had already floored him once, and the fact that he was almost aggressively stupid during the first game, the attempt fell flat almost immediately.
"What's that look on your face?" she asked, smirking slightly. "You trying not to sneeze, or something?"
That got his attention, prompting Riku to charge recklessly at her, his wooden sword held high over his head as if he intended to give her a severe thwacking with it. Stepping calmly out of his path, Sarah grabbed Riku's sword-less arm and assisted his forward- momentum, right into the sand. Riku came up spluttering – Sarah wondered for a moment if he'd gotten sand in his mouth or if he was just that shocked – and Sarah's smirk widened ever-so-slightly. Carefully, making sure that he was still watching what she was doing, Sarah stuck the wooden sword she'd been given point-down into the sand, making sure to drive it deep enough that it would stand on its own when she left it there. Then, just to make sure that Riku didn't get any absurd ideas about her giving up or something stupid like that, she made a "bring it on" gesture with her previously-occupied hand.
Riku took the bait, just like she'd always known he would, and charged at her again, sword swinging in a manner that would have been dangerous if he'd been wielding live steel. One would have thought that he'd have learned better after experiencing the results of his last two attempts, but one look at his face told Sarah everything she needed to know: Riku was clearly too angry to think straight at this point.
Crouching as Riku came within striking-distance of "her" head and shoulders, she put the full weight and strength of Sora's body behind a rising-uppercut right into Riku's gut. The silver-haired boy stumbled backwards, wooden sword falling from his nerveless fingers as he clutched at his stomach.
"Watch your footing," she taunted, crouching again to deliver a powerful sweep-kick that sent Riku crashing to the ground on his side.
Rising back to her feet, Sarah bounced lightly on the balls of said feet a few times, both to loosen herself up a bit more – it was never a good idea to be tense when you were fighting – and to taunt Riku as he lay there staring up at her from his latest harsh encounter with the sand. Riku took the bait almost immediately – honestly, it was almost embarrassing how easily-predictable he was getting; still funny as hell, though – grabbing his sword and charging at her with the kind of reckless abandon that she hadn't seen in anyone since she had encountered her last strike-team as Alex Mercer. Looking back over her shoulder to judge the distance, she smirked slightly when she saw that she was in almost the perfect place to serve her current needs. Side-stepping out of the way of Riku's headlong assault on her person, she grabbed his sword-arm before he could overshoot her position, assisting his forward-momentum with a brief, almost involuntary "Hyah!"
Cue the "yaahh- ker-splash", she mused with genuine amusement, as Riku fell into the ocean with a brief scream. Walking out to the edge of the small islet, knowing that Riku wouldn't be able to climb back up without the aid of the ladder and the sand-bar he was currently in the wrong position to access, Sarah smiled cheerfully down at him.
"I do believe I just won that round."
Riku, after a few, long moments spent seething impotently up at her – moments during which she waved happily down to him – swam for the ladder, and the sand-bar that would allow him to access it. Moving back to the center of the islet, knowing that Riku would be all too happy to push her off, or even pull her off, if she gave him half the chance, Sarah smirked as Riku made his dripping way back over to where she stood waiting for him.
"You're not going to do that again, Sora," he said, his teeth gritting fury and a harsh glare on his face.
She smiled, bland and mocking. "Of course not; I never use the same moves twice in a row."
Well, at least not if her opponent was smart enough to at least begin to anticipate her moves and hence to develop a strategy to counter them. Still, Riku seemed to be doing just that; at the very least, he hadn't yet charged headlong into yet another throw. Maybe being dumped into the drink had managed to cool his metaphorical heels.
Riku was staring at her now, or at least the boy he still thought she was, and he continued to do so even as she slowly paced a circle around him, assessing his stance and his state of readiness the same way she could remember every one of her combat-instructors doing. It wasn't much of a stance, really; Riku just looked tense, as if he was waiting for some new kind of attack to be used against him.
Experimentally, Sarah took a swing at him. The result was pretty much immediate: Riku jumped back, crouched slightly to give himself some much-needed stability, and jabbed at her with his right fist. She dodged of course, moving out of the range of his fists with the same smooth, quick motions that she had used when attacking, but the reaction in itself was still something to see.
"Innovation, from you," she said contemplatively, looking him over once again; she noticed that his sword was missing, and wondered for a moment if he'd dropped it in the water or just put it next to Sora's, before discarding that whole line of thought as unimportant. "That's interesting. I have to admit, I didn't think you were the type. I'm really surprised." She grinned. "Makes things more fun."
"Oh, so you think this is fun, Sora?" Riku demanded, looking about as aggravated as she had ever seen him, in-game or not.
"Isn't that what I just said?"
It was obvious that Riku didn't care one little bit for that sentiment, but it was also just as obvious that the lessons she had inadvertently been teaching him while the two of them were having it out had finally begun to stick. That would certainly make things more than a little interesting. She and Riku circled one another, each looking for an opportunity to attack; for that one, crucial opening that would allow them to overwhelm their opponent.
Or at least to score a few free hits.
Deliberately leaving such an opening, wanting to know if Riku had truly learned his lesson about being so stupidly overconfident or if she still had a few more things to teach him on that front, Sarah waited a few moments as Riku took in her stance as the two of them continued to circle one another. When the silver-haired boy charged, after only a few moments of studying his loosened stance with an ever-growing smirk on his face, Sarah knew that she still had a few more harsh lessons to impart.
Grabbing Riku's right arm as he came within her strike-range, Sarah used his own momentum to whip him into a shoulder-throw that sent him crashing to the ground again.
"Wow," she said off-handedly, knowing that it would irritate him. "You must really like the taste of sand, Riku; you eating enough of it."
Worked like a charm; Riku was back on his feet in seconds, charging at her a few seconds after that, and slamming back into the ground a few moments after he'd run into the hip-throw that he'd been too angry to pay any attention to.
"How's all that sand tasting, Riku?" she asked cheerfully. "I always meant to ask."
"Why don't you try some of it yourself?" he demanded, rushing at her with both fists raised in what looked like a crude double-axe-handle.
Smiling just as cheerfully as she ever had, Sarah stepped just out of his path and then stuck out her left leg to trip him. Riku went sprawling again, flat on his face in the sand for the third time since they'd started this whole thing.
"You know, I don't think I'm going to be able to try any of that sand if you keep eating it all, Riku."
The boy in question looked back up at her, the expression on his face stating almost clearer than words that he'd have liked nothing more than to take her apart slowly, painfully, and piece-by-piece.
"You know, as fun as all this has been, I really think we should end it," she said, smiling to goad Riku into that final, fateful charge. "There's a lot more things to get done today, and I have to confess that I really don't have time to play with you anymore."
Dodging out of the way of Riku's furious charge a last time, Sarah grabbed his right arm and shoulder-threw him when he tried to come around for another pass at her. As Riku slammed into the ground for what would be the fourth and final time, Sarah shifted her weight and slammed an axe-kick into his head. When he had been sufficiently stunned that she felt that it was safe to move in closer, Sarah moved in behind him and slammed the side of her hand into the back of his neck.
"Good night, Riku," she said, smirking slightly as he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Making her way back off of the tiny islet, Sarah sighed with some satisfaction as she crossed the bridge back to the not-so-much-bigger main island. As she walked, Sarah turned over the thoughts she'd had the first few times that she'd played KH1. There were some new angles now, new things that she had to take into consideration since she was dealing with real people now, but that didn't necessarily mean that all of her earlier conclusions were completely invalid; it just meant that she was probably going to have to rethink some of them.
If there was one thing that would completely blow her cover as Sora, it would be killing or incapacitating Riku to save the rest of the world; Sora just wasn't the kind of person to think like that.
Looking down at the entrance to the so-called secret place – a.k.a. the cavern where you met up with "Ansem" – Sarah turned her attention to the foliage surrounding it. It wouldn't quite be enough to provide perfect concealment; she would have needed something a lot thicker, deeper, or perhaps higher to provide perfect concealment, but it probably would give people the idea that she didn't want to be bothered.
That would most likely be enough; no one here had struck her as particularly rude or nosy those times that she had played. Still, better to be a bit overly cautious rather than not cautious enough under the circumstances.
With that thought in mind, Sarah settled "herself" down in one of the thicker patches of foliage just to the right side of the cavern's entrance. Taking out the journal that she had appropriated for herself, Sarah began to write down the things she had been considering even before she had been rather forcibly shown that there was a real world with real people behind – or perhaps beyond – the TV screen.