Removing her supply-pack, since she didn't have to worry about panicking civs when there were no civs to panic, she let Kuromaru out and fetched up one of her remaining turkey sandwiches for a snack while she waited for the final preparations to be made. And all of the pre-flight checks to come out green.

The sensation of being lifted into the air prompted Sarah to look up at just what she was being held by, and then laugh briefly as she realized that it was a giant hand. There were few things more funny than being picked up by a giant hand, but being picked up by a giant hand while eating a sandwich pretty much had to be one of them. Reaching up to brace herself with "her" unoccupied left hand, Sarah looked down to see Kuromaru curled up around "her" feet and hanging on as tightly as it could.

She smiled down at the Shadow as the two of them were neatly deposited within the ship alongside Donald and Goofy. Working her supply-pack up and off of "her" back, Sarah sat down in the down in the seat the hand had plunked her in, while Kuromaru curled up at "her" feet.

Once Donald and Goofy had settled themselves into their own chairs, and she had finished the last of her turkey sandwich, Sarah strapped herself in with what looked a bit too much like the shoulder-strap belt in the front seat of a car.

All right, note to self: any ship I commission is going to have a five-point harness, she mused, looking back up at Donald and Goofy as the two of them settled fully into their own stations.

"So, where to first?" she asked, looking from Donald to Goofy, since she'd found herself placed between the two of them.

"Well, I think we should go to the Coliseum first," Donald said. "We could get some training as a team!"

Both Donald and Goofy seemed fairly enthusiastic about that, so she decided to go along with it; it wasn't as though she could make any suggestions and actually be taken seriously.

"What do I do here?" she asked, looking down at the controls of the ship.

"Well, since I don't really like fighting, I figgered you might not mind takin' over the weapons," Goofy said, tilting his head and smiling.

"All right," she said, looking down at the control-stick – or rather dual-sticks – she was seated in front of. "I guess I can do that," she said, settling "her" hands on the stick. "We all set now?"

"Yeah!" Donald exclaimed. "Launch crew, we're ready to head out now!"

The ship's engines rumbled, as they slowly began to move away from the hangar.

The acceleration was about as smooth as she could ask for, and in a weird way it kind of reminded her of the times that she, her dad, and one or more of her brothers would take road trips in their family's minivan.

Testing the grip on the trigger-mechanism, she found that there were only two buttons: one under each of "her" pointer-fingers. She supposed that fit, since the original ship that the three of them had traveled in – at least before she'd collected enough Gummis to begin work on a ship of her own – had only had one or two guns; though she couldn't remember precisely which at the moment.

"Sora, we might be encountering Heartless ships out here," Donald said, his tone serious, though she didn't stop scanning the nearby spacelanes to look at him. "So, you should probably-"

"Lay on the trigger? Yeah. Don't worry," she said calmly, already squeezing both triggers to lay down a steady barrage of firepower. "I know how to handle bandits."

Donald said something else, she was fairly certain of it; but by then her focus had fully shifted to target-hunting, and she had no real inclination to answer. This wasn't a game anymore, after all; screw up out here and there might be a chance that they could limp back to dry-dock to have their ship repaired, but there was a lot more of a chance that would suffer a catastrophic hull-breach and be thrown out into what passed for interstellar space around here. From there she didn't know what would happen, but she wasn't particularly eager to find out, either.

"Heads up, we've got incoming," she said almost reflexively, even though it was entirely more than likely that Donald and Goofy had seen just the same group of Heartless ships that she had.

Still, no harm in just saying it.

Donald maneuvered their ship about as well as she could ask for, though she wondered for a few moments just how her dad and his buddies in the service would have reacted to what was going on around them. There wasn't much time for idle musings like that, however; their ship bucked, twisted and lurched, as Donald sent them on an evasive course that also allowed her to wipe out large swathes of Heartless ships even with the fairly limited firepower provided by this first ship of theirs. As they flew through the small clouds of Gummi blocks that remained, Sarah briefly wondered if this was how the collection mechanic worked when it really couldn't be considered a mechanic anymore.

Still, the middle of combat was hardly the place to think about things like that, so Sarah put the thought aside almost before it was fully-formed. Licking dry lips in a brief pause between waves, Sarah took a deep breath – or she yawned, she wasn't paying enough attention to that kind of thing to determine which – and returned her main focus to their current mission. There seemed to be a bit more background noise in the cockpit than usual, so maybe Donald and Goofy were talking to each other.

As long as they didn't expect her to participate in the conversation, that was perfectly fine.

Soon enough, the waves of Heartless ships began to taper off, and Donald began to guide their ship along a smoother course, so Sarah allowed "her" hands to relax. She did, of course, keep her fingers on the triggers, since there were always stragglers in engagements like this one. That held true even now, and as she picked off the remainder of this particular fleet, Sarah allowed herself to settled back into her seat as she began to catch glimpses of their present destination.

It didn't look much like it had in-game, but then she hadn't really been expecting it to; the colors were somewhat the same, though there was naturally a lot more blue and green, considering that this was a living world hovering over. It made even more sense, of course, when one knew that the myths that this place had been – extraordinarily loosely – based on had originated in the Mediterranean.

"All right, I'm setting the ship into geosynchronous orbit, " Donald said, turning to look at her with an expression that seemed to expect something.

She raised "her" eyebrows slightly. "So, we're not landing, then."

"No," the drake said, though he still seemed to be expecting something from her.

She stood up, having previously removed her seatbelt. "We in high, middle, or low-orbit? Thanks, Kuromaru," she added, as the Shadow plucked up the straps of her supply-pack and pressed them into "her" right hand.

"Low-middle," she heard Donald say, as she swung the pack up onto "her" back and settled it there.

Though when she looked back at Donald, she found that he still kind of looked like he expected something from her.

So, smirking slightly, she continued. "Above or below the plane of the ecliptic?"

Donald closed his eyes, scoffing. "Smart guy."

The sound of a zipper being unzipped drew pretty much everyone's attention, and as she looked toward "her" back as well as anyone who wasn't Mr. Fantastic could ever manage, she saw Kuromaru climbing back inside.

She chuckled. "You're lucky I'm not storing much else in there right now." Adjusting the straps to compensate for the small bit of extra weight that the Shadow added to her pack, she turned back to Donald and Goofy; though mostly Donald, since he seemed to be the one who still had helm control. "Well, I'm all set to go here, how about you guys?"

"Yeah," Donald said, nodding even in spite of the uncertainty she could still see lurking in his eyes. "Preparing to teleport."

"Make it so," she said; just like the "Ansem" impression she'd done earlier, her Picard came a great deal easier now that she was using Sora's vocal chords.

Donald looked a bit startled by her turn of phrase, but by then the three of them were already in the process of teleporting down to the planet. The three of them arrived in the large, open space of what Sarah could just about remember as the main courtyard of the Coliseum. Looking out over the courtyard, she found herself facing a pair of large, helmeted statues that faced each other behind a pair of crossed swords. She hadn't quite remembered that one would have had to walk under those crossed blades to enter the main part of the coliseum, but as it turned out that was just the case.

She, Donald, and Goofy all made their way into the main area of the Coliseum, passed by a large amount of burning structures that looked like stone barrels, then moved into the columned area, and from there under the statues that marked the entrance to the Coliseum itself. She and Donald shoved the large double-doors open, and Sarah caught her first glimpse of Phil in the flesh. She still couldn't help but wonder how he maneuvered that fat, ungainly body he had with those scrawny little legs of his. She wasn't crass enough to actually ask, of course, but she still watched him waddle around on those spindly legs and wondered just how he managed to do it without unbalancing himself.

Still, that wasn't what the three of them had come here for, so Sarah put the thought out of her mind.

"Good morning," she called, trying to recall just what kind of reception the three of them had gotten when they'd first made their way to this particular planet, but her last playthrough of KH1 had been at least a couple years ago, and even though she liked to watch the Hellfire Commentaries playthrough, it'd been a long time since she actually had.

"Oh, hey," Phil called over his right shoulder. "If you guys came to reserve seats for the Games, I'll be right with ya."