Once she'd finished with that, Sarah set her journal neatly back down next to the mantle with the Seal lying on top. Closing the drawer back up again, Sarah yawned as she began to shed Sora's clothes for the night. Tossing the used outfit neatly into the hamper, Sarah smiled and called out her thanks to Kuromaru as the Shadow stationed itself next to the room's light-switch before she herself could start towards that part of the room.
The little Shadow seemed to be picking up more than a few interesting little habits the longer the two of them stayed together, she mused, even as she made her way back to the bed she'd been using since the start of this bizarre little adventure. Bidding Kuromaru good night as she climbed back into bed at last, Sarah smiled softly as the light snapped off, and she closed "her" eyes at last.
~KH1~
Waking up the next morning, feeling as refreshed as she ever had, Sarah reached for her supply-pack, but quickly found the thermos of milk she'd intended to fetch being pressed into "her" right hand instead.
"Thanks, boy," she said, twisting off the cap and taking a couple healthy swallows, before closing the thing back up and letting Kuromaru take it away the way the Shadow seemed so eager to do.
Rising from her bed, Sarah made for the attached shower room, so that she could start her day properly.
Once she'd finished with her shower – with no interruptions, Sarah was pleased to note – she yawned as she made her way back out into the main room again. Tossing yesterday's pair of underwear into the hamper by the door, Sarah made her way over to the duffel and began to dig through it. More than likely, today was going to be the day that she and hers encountered that gun-happy nut Clayton, which meant that they were going to be headed into the jungle, and she needed to prepare for that.
So, with that thought in mind, Sarah slipped on the pair of long pants she'd brought along for the occasion, added one of the many t-shirts that she'd brought along, and topped the outfit off with the light jacket – something she hoped would be heavy enough to keep her from being chewed up by mosquitoes and any other kinds of insects that one would find in the jungle, without adding too much heat-trapping weight to her clothing – rolling it up so that it could more easily fit into her supply-pack for when she needed it. She shifted the thermoses of milk, and the bottles of water and Potion that she had purchased yesterday so she'd be able to get at them easier in the event that she needed them, and then turned her attention to her cooler-bag and the sandwiches it still held. Sure, magical preservation was nice and all, but she didn't really know if it extended to preserving food in edible condition, or if it just meant that she didn't need to store it in any special way.
A sniff at each of the five sandwiches she had remaining, however, confirmed that they were still as good as they looked, and when she opened the thermos of hot coco, she found that the same held true there, as well.
Convenient, she mused, closing up her supply-pack as she rose back to "her" feet, the laughed as Kuromaru came bounding back over to what seemed to have become the little Shadow's favorite place to ride when she and hers were making their way through the small worlds that they were taking the time to search on their way to… whatever their ultimate destination was going to end up being. They could still end up at the Door to Darkness, or Kingdom Hearts, of wherever the three from KH1 had ended up at the end of their long journey.
It would certainly be interesting to see how the course of their journey changed, particularly considering that that ripples of change caused by her actions weren't limited to the small planet she'd taken said action on.
Pulling open the door, Sarah found Yuffie standing just behind it, already poised and ready to knock.
"Morning, Yuffie," she said, as the pair of them fell into step on their way out of the hotel.
"Good morning, Sora," the ninja said, as they made their way out of the hotel and across the courtyard that made up a big part of the Second District. "Cid wants to see you at his shop as soon as possible. Says he has something to give you?"
The lilt at the end of Yuffie's sentence heavily implied that the other girl was asking her a question, but fuck if she knew just what it was that Cid wanted to give her. She hadn't mentioned anything about the Gummis she'd been collecting, and she sure hadn't put in any kind of special order that might have been coming in. If special orders were even a thing here, which was yet another thing that Sarah was forced to confess she didn't know about the place that she was currently using as a base of operations.
She might try to go about finding that out later, but for the moment she wasn't particularly fussed about what was ultimately a minor detail in the grand scheme of things.
"I take it he didn't tell you what he actually wants with me," she commented, as the pair of them shoved open the doors to the First District and made their way through them.
"No," Yuffie laughed softly, as they took the shortcut down the stairs and made their way up to the door of the shop that Cid ran.
She scoffed, rolling "her" eyes. "Some people just have no manners," she muttered, prompting a spate of snickers from Yuffie as they made their way inside.
Sure enough, Cid was right behind his counter, just the way she'd been expecting. But, what did come as something of a surprise was the fact that Squall was there, too. Speaking of people with no manners, she mused, taking in the brunet with a sweep of her gaze.
"Good morning, Squall," she said, standing at ease within the shop as she turned her gaze to Cid.
"Sora, did you really ask Cid to slap me?" Squall asked, sounding like he couldn't quite believe the words coming out of his mouth.
"No, I asked him to swat you upside the head," she said, glancing over "her" right shoulder so that she could briefly skewer Squall with her gaze, before turning her attention back to Cid. "There is a difference."
The man in question laughed gruffly, the long toothpick in his mouth shifting around a bit before he took the thing out. "Good one, kid," he said, plunking the toothpick he'd been chewing down into an empty glass by his right hand. "I'll have ta remember it." Then the expression on his face became more serious, though his smile didn't falter. "Anyway, I just wanted to give you somethin' ta make sure you'd be prepared for anythin' the Worlds out there might throw at ya," Cid continued, though she got the feeling that he wasn't entirely happy at the moment. She didn't know why or with what, but that was the feeling she got from the look in his eyes, and the way his smile had become that much more brittle. "So, I got ya these, to go with what ya had before."
He set down four rather familiar items on the countertop, and Sarah raised "her" eyebrows in surprised recognition.
"Are those my knives?"
Sure, she'd known on an intellectual level just how likely it was that the man had seen the full contents of her supply-pack when she'd entrusted it to him however many nights ago it had been since she'd first arrived, but she had been pretty much dead on "her" feet at the time, and Cid hadn't said a word about the matter until now, so she hadn't bothered thinking about it.
"Yeah," the man said, not sounding a hundred percent back to normal, but at least better than he had. "I figured you could use 'em, now that you and the king's people are startin' to make some decent headway against the Heartless," he sighed, looking wearier than he had before. "Some people ain't gonna be happy about that." For a long moment, Cid's gaze stayed fixed on the four now-sheathed knives on the countertop before him, then he seemed to shake himself out of his funk, smiling in a way that looked far more natural on his face. "Anyway, much as I hope you don't end up needin' 'em, I figure your dad gave 'em to you for a reason."
"Thanks," she said, smiling up at the blond for a few moments, before turning her attention back to the quartet of knives laid out on the counter.
"I'll help you get 'em on later, kid," the blond said, coming out from behind his counter, ruffling "her" hair in passing as he made his way over to the far wall of his shop; directly opposite the entrance.
Raising an eyebrow as the man pulled down a wooden ladder that seemed to have been bolted to the ceiling – or at least attached in some other manner that she wasn't quite close enough to determine – Sarah tilted "her" head curiously as the blond lowered the ladder the rest of the way to the ground.
"Huh," she said.
She'd a vague sort of recollection that something like this had happened in-game, but she couldn't quite manage to recall the specifics of it, it probably hadn't been done by an NPC back then, however.
"C'mon, kid," Cid said, a gentle smile on his face as he waved her forward. "The Moogles've been wantin' ta meet ya ever since they got their little shop set up."
Well, that's different, she mused, following Cid up the ladder and into the second-level shop that she hadn't taken more than a passing glance at while she'd been in and out of the First District on various errands.
Once the pair of them were standing within the domain of this particular group of Moogles, Sarah quickly found herself the center of attention for the tiny, apparently magical creatures.
"Good morning, and welcome to our shop, kupo," the Moogle standing at the front of the group – actually standing, rather than hovering the way she'd seen so many of them doing – said, waving.
A soft shove to "her" left shoulder reminded Sarah that she was the one that all of the little creatures were interested in at the moment, which she supposed made some sense, since this group in particular would have already been familiar with Cid, if not intimately so.
"Good morning," she said, having made her way to stand in front of the small group of Moogles.
She didn't know the precise reason for such an interest, but considering everything that had been going on in her life of late, Sarah could have at least hazarded a guess.
"Would you mind letting us meet your Heartless, kupo?"
Called it, she mused, turning so that she could more easily gain access to the supply-pack she now habitually wore. Removing the thing so that she could set it on the floor of the shop, Sarah opened it up and looked down into the wide, yellow eyes of the little Shadow that had taken up residence there.
"Say hi to the nice Moogles, Kuromaru," she said, smiling as the Shadow took the opportunity to climb back onto "her" back, just as she'd learned to expect it to do.
"Wow, kupo," one of the other two Moogles – this one standing just to the right of their leader – exclaimed. "That Heartless of yours seems completely tame!"
"Yeah," she said, as Kuromaru rubbed its cheek against the left side of "her" face. "Just don't ask me how I did it," she chuckled. "Jury's still out on that."
The rest of her and Cid's time there was taken up with answering questions about just what it was that she'd been doing while she and hers were offworld, apparently in order to determine just what kind of equipment that the defenders of this world and various others were going to need if they were to be an effective fighting force against the Heartless. Sarah herself made a few suggestions here and there, but for the most part she answered the questions posed to the best of her ability, allowing those with more experience with combat under their present conditions to determine the course of action they would take.
In the end, to both her surprise and interest, Sarah found herself being provided with a pair of slim bracers that were apparently made specifically for channeling magical energies in a variety of ways. She was grateful for the consideration, thanking the Moogles for such, but Sarah couldn't help wondering just how it was that they worked. When she asked, Sarah found out that the bracers she was wearing were apparently meant to function as both a draw and a kind of stabilizer for the magical energies all around her.
That was, if she'd interpreted the jargon she'd been hearing correctly.
When she and Cid made their way back down into the man's own shop once more, Sarah gripped the straps of her supply-pack and turned to look back over "her" right shoulder.
"Well, that was a rather productive meeting," she commented, as the man made his way back over to the counter she'd usually found him standing behind those times when she'd come to see him for one reason or another.
"Yeah," he said, with a gruff sort of chuckle. "I'd have to say you're right, kid."
The blond went over to fetch the quartet of sheathed knives that he'd previously laid out, and Sarah obligingly removed her supply-pack to that the man would be able to have easier access to "her" arms, but interestingly enough, that wasn't the first place he reached for. No, the first thing Cid sis was buckle a sheathe each around "her" ankles, carefully enough so that they wouldn't interfere when she walked, which was a big point in his favor as far as she was concerned. When the blond looked down at the boy everyone still thought she was, Sarah raised "her" eyebrows in response.
"Well, what's the holdup?" she asked; he hadn't seemed this hesitant before.
"Maybe you should only take those two," the man said, his tone serious for the most part, but with an undercurrent of weariness that she hadn't heard from him before. "Not like yer gonna run into many things you'd be able to knife out there, anyway."
Judging by the expression on the blond's face as he looked down at the boy everyone thought she was, Cid wasn't particularly happy about sending someone as young as Sora out into the kind of danger that had been commonplace during the two KH games – well, one-and-a-bit-over-a-half, to be precise – that she'd actually played.
"Thanks," she said, wondering if there was indeed some way that she might be able to lift the burden of worry that Cid was so obviously laboring under, or if anything she tried to say would just end up making things worse.
She might not have been at the ultimate root of Cid's worries in any real sense, but Sarah didn't enjoy the helpless feeling she got when she just left someone to stew in their own turmoil.
In the end, however, Sarah found herself forced to do just that; clapping Cid's right arm – as close as she could manage to get to his shoulder while in Sora's body – and leaving the shop to meet up with Donald and Goofy again. There was nothing for it but to try to solve the problem posed by the Heartless; hell, she might even end up finding her way home in the process.
When she met up with her anthropomorphic traveling companions, Sarah found that the pair of them had just finished breakfast, and were once again preparing to depart from Traverse Town once more. Joining up with the pair of them as they continued on their way to the hangar, Sarah ate a pair of turkey sandwiches and had some more milk as she walked. Donald asked for some water, and since one could easily be generous when one possessed an infinite supply of something, she let him have some. The three of them who were traveling on foot made it to the hangar at nearly the same time as she herself finished eating, and Sarah quickly fell into step with Donald and Goofy as they boarded their ship.
Settling into her seat, after she'd taken off her supply-pack so that she could actually sit in it, Sarah wrapped "her" hands around the triggers for the ship's guns and waited calmly for the moment when she'd need to use them. The interior of their ship rumbled in concert with the thrumming of their engines, and Sarah took a deep breath as they left the confines of the hangar behind.
The lasers she was manning chewed through countless Heartless ships as they flew onward, and soon enough Sarah saw their present destination coming slowly into view. It looked a lot like her mental picture of Endor, really. At least, it fit with what she thought a "forest moon" would look like if she'd ever actually had the chance to see one up close.
"Let's move on," Donald said, sounding like he was exasperated by the delay, and also like he'd been taking part in some longer conversation that she hadn't been paying much attention to.
"Why's that?" she asked, turning her attention to the drake after she'd taken "her" hands off of the gun controls.
"Well, the King's not going to be on a backwater World like this one, so I was just telling Goofy that we should leave."
"Well, if you know where your King isn't, do you think you'd mind telling us where he is?" she asked, tilting "her" head slightly, humoring the drake even as she tried to show him the sheer stupidity of his current argument. "It'd certainly save us a lot of time."
"Well, I…" the drake turned away slightly, as though he was embarrassed to have made the argument in the first place; something she could work with, but also a lesson that could be forgotten if it wasn't hammered in properly. "I mean- that is…"
"I don't suppose you'd know where I could find Riku and Kairi," Sarah stated, into the silence left when Donald had trailed off. "Cause you know, that would really help me a lot."
Donald spluttered for a few moments, while Sarah kept a blandly hopeful expression on "her" face to drive the point home all the deeper; in the end, Donald started the landing-cycle and settled their ship down into a clearing that he'd managed to locate. Pleased to not have to deal with any of the aggravating bullshit she could remember rather well from this particular part of the game, Sarah cheerfully gathered up her supply-pack with Kuromaru inside, and happily joined the procession out of the ship.
Her first breath of jungle air wasn't quite as uncomfortably humid as she'd been subconsciously expecting, but for all that, it wasn't one that she particularly enjoyed.
As the four of them made their way out of the clearing and away from the expanse of their ship, Sarah began to smell the thick perfume of an uncountable number of flowers, and just below that the sickly-sweet stench of everything that had fallen down to rot on the jungle floor. It was a hell of a thing to notice, and for a few moments Sarah wondered just what Sora had made of this very situation in the timeline where he'd been the one chosen for this particular undertaking/
But she didn't have long to contemplate the myriad differences between herself and Sora, because a rather familiar man in a distinctive khaki suit came striding out of a thick stand of trees off a ways to their right.
"Good afternoon, sir," she said.
The man seemed surprised to be greeted so cordially, but considering both where he was and who he was, Sarah wasn't really surprised by that.
"Greetings," Clayton – Sarah wondered briefly if that was his first or last name, or if he even had a last name – said, regaining his composure with admirable swiftness. "Are you gentlemen lost?"
"We could use directions to the nearest settlement, if that's what you're asking," she said, after a moment's pause for either Donald or Goofy to say something. Seems like I'm the unelected spokeswoman, she mused, as Clayton offered to lead the three of them – plus the one he didn't know about – to the camp where he and his group were staying at present. Suppose I might as well get used to it.
As the five of them continued on their way to the camp that Clayton had offered to show them, Sarah could feel Kuromaru shifting restlessly against "her" back. She had only a few moments to wonder what was causing that, along with the rustling in the undergrowth that seemed to have them surrounded at the moment, before the leaves were forcibly parted and an uncommonly large force of Heartless burst into the small clearing that their group had just stepped into.
These ones did bear a noticeable resemblance to monkeys, which she'd always found rather amusing, considering that the most predominant inhabitants of this particular planet were great apes rather than monkeys. In-game, she'd supposed that that kind of thing could have been attributed to none of the developers or programmers quite understanding the difference between an ape and a monkey, but that didn't quite work out in this case.
She didn't have much time to wonder what it could have been, in this case, before the horde was upon them, and there was no more time for idle musings.
The three of them fought with the magics that came to them so easily, but as the horde continued gaining ground, Sarah found herself wishing for a better method of clearing the space around them of Heartless. Alex's Whipfist would be great for that, she reflected with grim amusement, even as she impaled a quartet of charging monkey-Heartless on a pair of Thunder Lances.
It was, perhaps, something to reflect on in more depth later. But for now, none of them could afford that kind of a distraction. They all had to be able to count on each other, if they aimed to make it out of this battle intact.
Once the last of the monkey-Heartless had been destroyed at last, Sarah breathed slowly and deeply to steady herself, even as she joined Goofy in checking over the rest of their group for any debilitating injuries that would necessitate the use of a Potion to recover from. Unfortunately, not a one of the recovery-items that she was aware off would have done one good goddamned thing about the exhaustion one was subject to after what amounted to several rounds with some of the most vicious predators that this particular 'verse had birthed.
However, she was going to make it a point to at least begin working on some variant of the technique after she and hers had returned to Traverse Town, considering the utility of such a thing against the swarms of Heartless that were starting to appear more often the farther they traveled.
Clayton, who had been standing off to the sidelines during the course of their engagement – which was all to the good as far as Sarah was concerned, since no one who wasn't a complete idiot wanted anyone firing into a mêlée – began to make his way back over to the four of them. Sarah felt Kuromaru beginning to settle back down, though when Clayton came to stand beside them she felt the Shadow shift slightly, as though taking note of the action.
She wasn't terribly surprised by the action, since she recalled the man having something to do with the Heartless incursion, though she didn't quite remember to just what extent that had been. She wondered what he made of the battle that had just taken place, since to a one they'd all been using powers that couldn't have been easily mistaken for anything but magic, back in the clearing the five of them were steadily leaving behind, since he hadn't actually said anything after taking in the visible members of their group with a sweep of his gaze.
Shaking "her" head briefly at the direction her thoughts had taken, Sarah continued to keep "her" eyes on the ground; one never knew, after all, what kind of unpleasant things could be found on the jungle floor. These were hardly the clean-swept sidewalks of Traverse Town or the like, after all.
A glint of silver amid the low-lying clump of clustered leaves that she and hers were just about to make their way through prompted Sarah to reach out and stop Donald before the drake could carelessly step on something he'd seriously regret. While Donald and Goofy both demanded – with varying degrees of politeness, of course – just what she thought she was doing, Sarah picked up a thick, fallen limb. Jamming the thing down atop the silvery-glint that she'd caught sight of through the foliage, she was rewarded – if one really wanted to call it that – with the expected snap-crunch of jagged-toothed steel jaws closing with bone-breaking force.
Bringing the tree limb back up into her line-of-sight, amid the shocked gasps of her traveling companions, Sarah narrowed "her" eyes as she examined the stainless steel jaws and wickedly serrated teeth of the trap she'd disarmed. The sound of someone coming back through the undergrowth drew Sarah's attention to Clayton, as he emerged from the jungle just up ahead of them.
"Tell me you're not responsible for this," she said, raising the fanged trap more clearly into their line-of-sight, and pausing for a moment as Clayton's gaze fell upon it.
"Preposterous!" the man shouted, his entire mien becoming one of affront and wounded pride. "As though an honest hunter such as myself would ever stoop to using such a vulgar device!"
It seemed genuine enough, so Sarah decided to let it go. There were a lot more pressing matters, after all; the Heartless threat still hung around them like a bad smell.
"All right, then," she allowed, nodding briefly to him before returning her attention to the undergrowth that she and hers had almost walked through all unknowing; just because one of the traps there had been tripped didn't mean it was all clear. After all, disarmed didn't mean disposed of, and there was still the chance that whoever had set these traps out had been intending to come back to more than one thing when they inevitably came back to check on their traps.
Using the fallen tree limb with the fanged trap still on the end of it, Sarah agitated the undergrowth in front of her until she both heard and felt the snap of another trap being triggered. This one was far less obvious than the glinting teeth of the fanged trap, and all the more dangerous for it; it was one of those wire snares that she'd previously only seen in books. Narrowing "her" eyes at the tools of the trade she'd just uncovered, Sarah turned her gaze back to Clayton, to see if she could gauge his reaction. He seemed furious, which was fair enough considering his reaction to the first trap she'd uncovered, but in an honest sort of way.
Not like he had something to hide.
"Let's get these things out of here," she said, after she'd managed to catch Clayton's attention, drawing him out of whatever fugue of rage he'd gone into when he'd seen that first trap.
"Yes, young man, you're entirely correct," the hunter said, seeming to bite down on his fury for a long moment. "We should see all of these infernal devices properly disposed of."
Donald and Goofy were both eager to help with that, of course, and soon enough the four of them had managed to unearth the fasteners for both the snare and the fanged trap.
"Well, whoever did this, you can't say they weren't professional," she muttered, sitting back on "her" haunches to examine the hole she'd just finished helping Clayton dig. "Those anchors were as deep as anyone could ask for."
Clayton scoffed in response, but from the look on his face, it seemed that he was fully aware that no one with working eyes could deny the truth of her statement. The remainder of their trip to the camp that the hunter had mentioned was made in silence. Not that she was really expecting much else, considering everything that had happened, but it was a noticeable contrast to how talkative her traveling companions usually were when they met new people.
Of course, judging by the tension she could see in every line of Clayton's body – to say nothing of the stiffness of his gait as he continued pressing onward through the jungle – it was possible that the pair of them simply understood that Clayton wasn't in any kind of mood to participate in any kind of conversation at the moment. Courteous of them to think of that, if such was indeed the case.
After a fairly long walk – the sun had dipped a fair distance down in the sky, so even without a watch she knew they were burning daylight – the five of them came upon a large clearing, one containing all the elements that an experienced camper would recognize as a semi-permanent site. Right down to the large, sturdy-looking, square tent on the far side of the clearing from their current position.
Clayton practically marched right up to said tent, with that same, stiff-legged stride as before; clearly not having calmed down in any real way since they'd started their trip. That added all the more credence to the notion that he hadn't been the one to plant those traps. Which was a bit unnerving, since it meant that there was an unknown factor at work in this place. Which meant that her memories of the game, vague as they could admittedly be, might not do her much good in this particular situation.
"Good afternoon- Mr. Clayton, just what in the world are you doing with those?!"
"This young man and his companions helped me to recover these infernal devices from where they had been concealed within the foliage," Clayton said, sounding like he was entirely too angry at whoever it was that had ultimately been responsible for those traps to take note of the tone of mild accusation in the newcomer's voice.
"Oh, I hadn't even noticed them," the woman said, sounding a bit embarrassed to be admitting to such a thing. "Good afternoon to all of you, as well," she said, sounding a great deal more cordial than she had before. "Have you come to study the gorillas, too?"
"Not exactly," she said, wanting to be as honest as she could, under the circumstances. "However, I wanted to ask you if you'd ever seen any creatures like this," she said, reaching for her supply-pack so that she could open it and allow Kuromaru to climb up onto "her" back. "We're trying to make sure that the wild ones don't hurt anyone else."
Clayton and the woman he was standing beside both looked surprised when Kuromaru popped its little head out of her pack and climbed up onto "her" shoulders to peer at the two of them with round, yellow eyes.
"Well, this has certainly been a day of firsts," Clayton, who seemed to have recovered his composure first, said with a rather bemused expression on his face. "I must confess, however, that I have seen creatures like that skulking about. I paid them little mind," Clayton continued, seeming rather more interested in Kuromaru's presence than in defending himself from what another person might have seen as an embarrassment. "However, are you suggesting that those creatures are actually dangerous?"
"Yes, quite so, in fact," she said, taking note of the subdued sort of excitement on the hunter's face; she'd clearly have to be careful when she advised him not to do anything stupid, since she knew his type at least well enough to know that telling him outright what to do would end up driving him to do the opposite; if not out of spite, then out of simple arrogance. "Conventional weapons barely seem to slow them down," she continued, as Kuromaru leaned out over "her" back, resting its round head on "her" left shoulder.
Clayton seemed particularly interested in that bit of information. Probably because he looked to be rather fond of that double-barreled shotgun of his, and clearly didn't want to believe that it would be useless against the enemy they were currently facing.
"Well, it seems as though there's a great deal more trouble than we first suspected, Ms. Porter," Clayton said, holding his shotgun a bit closer to his chest, as though to comfort himself against what he'd found out what was coming.
Coming? Hell, it's already here, she mused. "My companions and I are part of a hunting party, tasked with eliminating incursions of Heartless whenever we get word of their appearance," she said.
"That sounds like a noble vocation," Clayton said, sounding as though he fully approved of what she and hers were doing. "I think that I shall join you on your hunt."
"Very well," she said, knowing that it'd be both pointless and a waste of time to argue with the man when he seemed to have made up his mind. "Just, keep your wits about you. And, if one of us tells you to do something – no matter which one of us it is, or what they tell you – you do it. Understand? The animals you hunt can only kill you; Heartless can do much worse."
Some people might have said that death was the worst thing that could happen to someone, but those people were idiots, so Sarah had never given them much thought if they weren't actually in her way. Clayton seemed to be ready to make some kind of argument, probably about the conditions of his tagging along with them, but when she told the man in no uncertain terms that she would leave him behind in the tent, bound and gagged if necessary, he actually looked mildly impressed. Of course, the important part was that he didn't argue any further.
The five of them swiftly departed from the tent after that, making their way through the clearing and back under the eaves of the surrounding jungle. The distinct, cloying stench of rotting flesh came to her attention then, prompting Sarah to halt their procession.
"Ugh, that's an awful smell," Donald said, as the five of them made their way toward the large, bushy fern that the smell of rotting flesh was coming from. Moving over to the fronds, she pushed them aside to reveal the decaying corpse of a gorilla that had been carelessly tossed into them. A buzzing cloud of flies launched into the air at the disturbance, revealing the corpse all the more clearly to their group. Sarah, who had been steadily becoming accustomed to seeing things that she'd never come across in-game, heard a pair horrified gasps, and turned to look back at her traveling companions.
Donald and Goofy were as horrified and disgusted as she'd been expecting, but Clayton was different; Clayton looked furious.
"Poachers' butchery!" Clayton raised the rifle he was still carrying, as though wanting to use it on whoever he thought would be coming. "Young man, you and your friends should stay close to me from now on."
"You know who did this?" she asked, letting the fern fronds snap closed, hiding the corpse from view once more.
"I've familiarized myself with the work of that man since he arrived," Clayton spat. "I know his… proclivities better than most," Clayton narrowed his eyes, glaring at the fern fronds in front of them like they'd done him a personal wrong.
Sarah didn't have to waste time guessing why.
"You think he might have been the one who set those traps we found before we got here?" she asked, tilting "her" head curiously.
"Indeed," Clayton replied, his grip tightening on the stock of his shotgun for a long moment, before he seemed to come back to himself. "I truly think that you and yours would be a great deal safer if you stay behind me."
"I'll take that under consideration," she said, as the five of them continued on their way through the jungle.
After a few more steps, Sarah picked up a rock and threw it as hard as Sora's body could manage at a suspect patch of disturbed ground. Sure enough, the top of the pit collapsed inward, revealing the squarish pit that had previously been concealed beneath the mat of sticks, ferns, and leaf-litter that had been carefully laid down beforehand.
"We should all be careful where we step," she said, turning back to her traveling companions after a moment spent studying the pit in order to determine the thing's size, depth, and whether or not it had any spikes at the bottom. "I doubt this is the only pit-trap out here."
Happily enough, it did actually seem to be free of any spikes, but she was still fully conscious of the fact that there was always a chance of finding a spiked variant under one of those innocuous piles of leaf-litter they were inevitably going to be passing by on their way through the jungle before them.
"You have clearly had some prior experience with this kind of man," Clayton said, not sounding like he entirely approved, but at least like he appreciated her perspective.
She barked a laugh. "I do a lot of reading."
No one seemed interested in responding to that, and so the five of them continued on their way through the jungle. They were coming up on another clearing, but Sarah found that she didn't have much time to search for any signs of either King Mickey or the Heartless they were looking for, since she didn't particularly want to fall down any of the other pit traps that might have been waiting for them while they were searching for the man behind all of this.
"I suspect that that man has not yet been through this area. His work doesn't seem to be present as yet," Clayton said, as the five of them continued on their way toward the large clearing.
"It's so nice not to have your work go unappreciated," said a voice that Sarah couldn't help but remember particularly well. "Wouldn't you say so, Joanna?"
Coming out of the jungle to their left, striding calmly, with an amused sort of smile on his face, was a man that Sarah recognized from one of her favorite animated movies. The man himself was dressed in dark greens and khakis; with a dark-brown leather vest over his tan, button-up shirt. He wore dark khaki pants, and an almost black-green bandanna around his neck. The last and most recognizable article of clothing he was wearing was a battered brown fedora, with the sharp teeth of some kind of carnivorous animal lining the band.
Fuck me sideways; Percival C. McLeach, Sarah bit down on "her" tongue, hard enough to remind herself not to speak the name aloud.
There was no way in hell that her traveling companions wouldn't question the fact that she knew the name of a man she'd never met, on a world she'd never been to.
"Percival," Clayton all but snarled, grip tightening on his shotgun, as though he'd have liked nothing more than to shoot McLeach in the face.
"You know this guy?" she asked, curious and more than a bit apprehensive.
After all, while Clayton may have been more than a bit of an arrogant, high-handed ass – though interestingly enough, not so much as he had been in-game – he wasn't an out-and-out sadist like McLeach. After all, only one of them had ever thrown knives at a six-year-old's head, and it sure as hell hadn't been Clayton.
"Oh, we're old hunting buddies, him and I," McLeach said, a smirk on his weathered, sunken face that suggested he was taunting Clayton for the sheer fun of it; asshole. "Ain't that right, Cecil?"
"No, Percival," Clayton spat, furiously biting off the end of each word he spoke. "That's perfectly wrong. I would never associate myself with such a vile, vulgar poacher such as you."
Clayton's stance became all the more aggressive as McLeach strode calmly up to their group; the poacher's hands rested easily in his pockets, in stark contrast to the hunter, who now had his rifle aimed squarely at the other man's chest. And, while she couldn't see the expression on his face from her current vantage-point – and like hell was she taking her eyes off of Percival C. McLeach – Sarah was fully willing to bet that it was nothing like the sadistic, self-satisfied smirk McLeach was wearing, as he came out from under the shadows of the trees and into the clearing where their group of five now stood.
"Aw, and we'd hit it off so well, that first time we met," McLeach said, the mocking sadness in his tone almost perfectly complementing the self-satisfied smile on his face; prick.
"You not only killed that gorilla you were hunting, Percival, you cut off its hands, its head, and left its body to rot in the bush!" Clayton exclaimed, his fury clearly beginning to get the better of him. "I've found your leavings all over this forest, Percival, and I find that I am thoroughly sick of your presence!"
There was a subtle but distinct shift, and then a surge of something that drove Kuromaru to pop up out of her supply-pack and grab "her" right shoulder, almost frantically pulling on it. When she looked back that way to see just what it was that the little Shadow wanted her to notice, however, she saw that Kuromaru didn't seem to be actually pointing to anything so much as trying to get her to step back from whatever it could sense coming.
The distortion that appeared in the air, centered around Clayton, more specifically around his waist, legs, and feet let Sarah know that she hadn't quite managed to completely derail this part of the plot. Though this was a rather interesting twist as to just who Clayton was going to attack with that giant chameleon Heartless of his.
"Well, Clayton's officially lost it," she said, as the man in question rode off on his oversized Heartless amid the sounds of gunfire, and McLeach shouted for his pet goanna. "Any suggestions about what we do next?"
Goofy looked worried, but hesitant to actually suggest anything, under their present circumstances. Donald, of course, wasn't nearly so shy about expressing himself.
"I say we go look for any signs that the King was here," the drake said firmly.
"But, if Clayton was overtaken by Darkness, then what's gonna happen to this World if we just leave him here like this?" Goofy asked, finally seeming to have found his voice.
It was a good question, that, but before either she or Donald could begin to formulate an answer, a blur of scales, claws, and teeth raced through the center of their group. And, before Sarah could recover from the off-balanced half-step she'd been forced to take, she found herself yanked up by the front of Sora's shirt by someone who was quite a bit taller than she currently was. Opening "her" eyes as she felt "her" back being pressed against someone's chest, Sarah was startled to feel the edge of a knife being pressed to "her" throat.
Incredulous surprise quickly gave way to annoyance: she knew McLeach's character well enough to know that he had less than zero qualms about assaulting kids, and more than that there had been a firefight going on in the background; she should have known better than to discus strategy while they were still on contested ground. Still, there was at least one more thing she knew about ol' McLeach…
"You're pretty cocky when you're assaulting a helpless kid, ya dickless fuck," she growled, looking down toward the knife, just out of sight under Sora's chin.
"What did you just say?!" McLeach demanded, sounding like he couldn't quite believe what he'd heard, but was still pissed about it.
"I called you a dickless fuck," she said, twisting around as carefully as she could so that she could glare at him out of "her" left eye. "What are you, deaf?"
Just as she'd been counting on, an infuriated Percival C. McLeach was much easier to goad into doing what she wanted. Mainly turning her around, so that she could headbutt him in the fact while it looked like he was building up a full head of steam for some lecture or other. Dropped to the ground at the poacher's feet, Sarah drew back and punched him as hard as Sora's body would allow her to. Directly in the balls/
However, when she stopped for a moment to catch her breath – she'd always found that short, sudden bursts of repeated activity were somewhat harder to recover from than prolonged exercise; likely because one didn't have the time to pace oneself in those cases – Sarah felt someone grabbing her by the front of Sora's shirt, and then a sharp, quite literally stabbing pain in "her" gut.
She'd forgotten, for a moment, just what kind of a spiteful, vindictive son of a bitch McLeach really was. But then, it takes one to know one, she mused, with a distinctly morbid sort of amusement. As the edges of her field of vision began to distort and fade, Sarah pulled the knife around "her" right ankle free. Narrowing "her" eyes in order to focus on what she still could see, Sarah zeroed in on McLeach's left ankle and jammed her knife in as deep as she could, twisting the blade with a last surge of strength.
The sound of McLeach screaming brought a soft smile to "her" face, and as Donald, Goofy, and a smaller, black blur that she knew had to be Kuromaru raced over to her side, Sarah heard the far-off sound of a shotgun being fired. It'd be a pity if someone killed McLeach, though; she'd have loved to see that motherfucker try to ply his trade after she'd crippled him…