Yuffie fell back onto the bed laughing, after she'd just started sitting up, while Squall sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"All right," Yuffie said, sitting back up at last. "Let's stop teasing Squall, fun as it is." The man himself gave her an annoyed look for that. "And get going. We were due to meet up with Aerith soon, anyway."

"I'm sure she's just going to love you," Squall deadpanned.

Before she could do more than chuckle at Squall's little dig – a pretty good one for how stiff-necked he seemed to be – Kuromaru stood up suddenly, pulling and tugging at "her" left hand while pointing enthusiastically in that same direction. "What is it, boy?"

Her answer – all of theirs, come to think of it – came in the form of a child-sized ball of roiling Darkness that burst abruptly into being a few feet back from the room's only table. Sarah jumped back to "her" feet at nearly the same instant as Squall and Yuffie both did, Keyblade called back to "her" hand, even as drew his Gunblade and swung it to limber himself up for what was coming.

"Yuffie, go out and warn the others," he said firmly, even as Sarah limbered herself up for combat as best she could manage under the circumstances. "Sora, you're with me. Let's see if you still have the heart for this."

"Kuromaru," she said, turning to the Shadow who'd climbed up onto "her" back and was now peeking over "her" right shoulder. "Stay."

A powerful swipe and a shot from Squall's Gunblade blew the Soldier Heartless out through the window, and she followed Squall in a vault through that window, across the balcony, and down to the ground without hesitation.

"Don't worry about the small fry," Squall advised, as Sarah took in their current battlefield with a sweeping glance; hardly ideal for enemies who wouldn't be stunned when you slammed them into walls. "Follow me, and let's deal with the leader!"

Sensible. "Roger that; on your six."

Falling in behind the man as he started to move again, Sarah matched his speed, all the while adjusting herself so that she could remain a good few paces behind him so that the two of them wouldn't trip each other up, or be at risk of injuring the other with the stroke of their respective swords. Squall, naturally, took the brunt of the assault from the Soldiers, but every once and again once of them would slip past him and Sarah would be forced to deal with the thing herself. They continued that way for some time, Squall opening any door in front of them with a shoulder-barge so that he could keep at least a fair amount of his momentum, and then cutting down the Soldiers and other types of Heartless who tried to swarm them on the other side, until at last they had reached a purple, checkered courtyard of about the right size and shape to serve as a gladiatorial arena.

While Sarah paused for a few moments in the absence of Heartless attacks – to catch her breath after the running-battle that she'd just participated in – she caught sight of something bright and colorful falling down toward the ground.

"Nice of you to drop in," she said, as what she realized were two people – anthros, rather – disentangled themselves and stood up.

"Donald, Goofy," Squall greeted, making his way over to where the three of them were standing. "Good, you're here."

"Hey, Leon!" Goofy greeted happily, once his laughter had trailed off; Sarah wondered briefly about that, but since it wasn't really important, she decided not to pursue that line of thought.

"A Heartless!" Donald shouted, his staff aimed at the exact place where Kuromaru's head peeked out from over "her" right shoulder.

"He says that Heartless is friendly," Squall interjected; his tone was still as skeptical as ever, but Sarah was grateful for his support all the same.

Before any kind of conversation could start up between the four of them, Kuromaru began pulling urgently at "her" right shoulder, and pointing to the left. That, naturally, was where the latest in a long line of Soldier Heartless emerged.

Calling the Keyblade back to hand – she'd wonder later about how she was able to use the Kingdom Key when she and Sora were such very different people – Sarah cut down a charging Soldier and moved quickly onto the next one. She could vaguely remember something that had happened here – something fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, but at least threatening enough to nag at her in the midst of everything that was happening – but it had been long enough since she had either played the game or watched the Hellfire Commentaries LP that she couldn't quite recall what it was. Sure, she was going to find out just what that was sooner than later, but it would have been at least nice to be able to mentally prepare herself for what was coming. Seriously, she mused with mordant good-humor, wading into a group of Soldier Heartless and cutting them down amid bolts of elemental magic from Donald's staff and shots from Squall's Gunblade. If I'd known this shit was going to go down, I would have done my research beforehand.

When the sky opened up and rained down a fully-articulated suit of dark-purple armor with a Heartless emblem in the center of the currias, Sarah swore softly under her breath; this was one of those things that she would have wanted to have the time to mentally prepare for. Still, nothing for it but to keep moving forward now.

Leaving her remaining emotions behind where she started, Sarah waded back into the battle, fully understanding the fact that she wasn't going to come out of this scrap without some scrapes of her own.

The armor's clawed gauntlets whipped through the air, causing Sarah herself to bob, duck, and weave to get out of their range, and a brief, sharp pain in her left shoulder when she didn't move fast enough; she quickly dismissed that. It wasn't something that she could spare any attention for at the moment.

Beating unmercifully on the greave nearest to her, once she had managed to make it past the rather formidable defenses presented by the gauntlets, Sarah dove out of the way of a mule-kick from the other greave just as the one she'd been pounding away at was destroyed by another shot from Squall's Gunblade. Throwing herself into a combat-roll out of the range of the armor, Sarah paused for only a moment to catch her breath, before throwing herself back into combat with renewed vigor.

With their combined efforts, each able to patch holes in an ally's defense or to cover for them when they needed to catch their own breath after striking a particularly powerful blow, they were eventually able to whittle the Heartless before them down to merely its currias and helm. Squall was the one who ultimately killed it; walking into the thing with a steady barrage of shots from his Gunblade.

"I really need to look at getting one of those," she said, as the adrenaline-rush of combat began to ebb, leaving her free to notice the feel of some kind of liquid being poured over "her" back.

"Sorry, none of the shops here sell them," Squall said, as he made his way over to where she'd sat down to rest from the battle, once it'd become clear that Squall had things well in hand. There was a look of respect on his face, when he reached down to help Sora back to "her" feet. "I think I might be able to find the parts to make you one, if you really want me to."

"You sure it wouldn't be too much trouble?" she asked, wanting to be polite even though the idea of having her own Gunblade was pretty much made of win and fuck yeah.

"With Cid's help to get some of the specialized parts I need?" the smile on Squall's face was a small one, sure, but it was more than she'd seen from him in-game. "I'm sure I'll be able to make you something you can handle."

"Thanks."

"Hey!" Donald called, drawing the attention of her and Squall both, as had probably been his intention from the start. "Your name is Sora, right?"

"Yeah, that's me," Sarah said, after briefly being tempted to make a sarcastic comment or two.

"The King wanted us to find the one who held the Key," the vaguely anthropomorphic duck continued, looking rather pleased with himself. "So, why don't you come with us?"

"Yeah!" Goofy interjected, with what seemed to be his usual amount of enthusiasm. "We can go to all kinds of other worlds on our vessel."

"That's good to hear; I was separated from my two companions when I ended up here," she said, despite the fact that she already knew pretty much the general areas where those two had ended up. "They weren't here to meet me when I woke up, so I figure they must be out there, somewhere," she said, sweeping "her" right arm to take in the whole of the sky. "If you guys need my help with anything, that's fine with me, so long as I also get the time to look for my companions, as well."

"Well, a'course you will!" Goofy enthused, while Donald looked as grudgingly reluctant as he ever did; Sarah added one more item to her mental list of reasons she would enjoy punching Donald in the face. "Fair's fair, after all."

Or at least hitting him with a blunt object, since his beak would serve to deflect punches that weren't intended to really hurt him.

"There's also the fact that the King himself urged you to go with them when you met up with him," Squall said, looking briefly curious before settling back into stoicism again.

"Yeah, there's that, too."

She would have been the first to say that such a thing hadn't seemed particularly pertinent to their current situation, being more of an interesting aside than any kind of topic for further discussion, but since she hadn't brought it up she wasn't going to make a fuss about it.

"What?!" Donald exclaimed, his gaze snapping back toward "her" so fast that Sarah would have been surprised if he hadn't hurt his neck.

She bit back a smirk, if only for the generally amusing nature of this whole situation. "Yeah; I gave him a ham sandwich and some milk, and he told me to stick with you guys if we ever met up," she took out the photos that King Mickey had given her. "I didn't bring it up because it seemed kind of redundant, what with you guys already inviting me along and all."

"Golly, it was real generous of you, offerin' the King your food like that," Goofy said, the cheerful grin that never seemed to be far from his face returning in full force.

"I had more," she said, not wanting them to get the wrong impression any more than she needed them to. "You see, my companions and I were going to be heading off on a rafting trip, and I was pretty much in charge of provisions. So, when… everything happened, I still had my supplies."

"That makes sense," Squall said, speaking up again after looking contemplative for a long few minutes.

"Speakin' of supplies, let's all go get dinner," Goofy said cheerfully, putting his hands on Donald's left shoulder and "her" right. "I don't know about you guys, but all that fightin' gave me an appetite!"

"Sure, sounds good to me," she said.

It was becoming all the more clear to her just how real this place and all of its people had become; it was an interesting contrast, the more she saw of it.

"Yeah," Squall said, though he sounded about as enthusiastic about the idea as he did about everything else.