"All right," Donald said, sounding rather pleased. "I asked Cid to install a teleporter, so we won't have to land and risk anybody coming across the ship in a place like this."
To say nothing of the risk of getting her buried in sand, Sarah mused, as the sensation of sliding down a tunnel filled with light briefly overcame her senses.
When Sarah was able to make out her surroundings once more, she found herself and her companions in a dark, musty-smelling place; clearly a storage room of one kind or another, if the stacked crates, carpets, and barrels were anything to go by. The three of them made their way to the only door in or out of the place – combined with the sheer absence of windows, it gave far more credence to the idea that this place was a storeroom – Sarah cracked it so that their eyes, having previously adapted to the darkness within the storeroom, wouldn't be overwhelmed by the bright sunlight outside.
The air was warm and full of spices, and as the three of them made their way out of the storage room they'd all arrived in, Sarah found herself wondering just what kind of foods were being cooked to make the air smell that way.
"Well, I can say one thing," she commented, as a certain scent came wafting over to her. "Someone really likes coffee."
Donald made a rather amusingly disgusted face at the prospect, and the four of them continued on their way into the city. The sudden, sharp smell of cheese drew Sarah's attention after a few more steps, prompting her to look over at a large, shaggy beast of burden that was standing near one of the stalls. It looked like some kind of oversized goat or something, but just as she was about to take a closer look at the animal, Donald spoke up.
"Sora, we don't have time to go looking around at every little thing!"
"Right," she said, nodding sharply as she turned away from the well-provisioned beast of burden – whoever owned it was probably a merchant or something – and falling into step with Donald and Goofy. "So, either of you have any idea where we might start looking?" she asked, once the four of them had passed beyond the admittedly sparse – crowds within the open-air market they'd arrived nearby.
"Kuromaru seems ta be good at spottin' Heartless," Goofy said, smiling in that cheerful-oblivious way that seemed to be a signature expression of his. "Why don't ya ask him?"
Donald didn't seem particularly enthused by the idea, but after everything that had happened, Sarah figured it couldn't hurt much. Picking a clear patch of wall to lean against, Sarah opened her supply-pack and let Kuromaru peek out once more.
"So, you getting any bad-vibes here, boy?" she asked, waiting to see how the little Shadow reacted.
She knew that there probably were Heartless here, and also that there had been plenty to grind off of in-game, but she didn't know where they were or how far away they might have been. So, when Kuromaru started hopping up and down, pointing off to their right and at a place they hadn't explored yet, Sarah raised "her" eyebrows even as she narrowed "her" eyes.
"All right," she said, pushing off of the wall so that she could sling her supply-pack back up onto "her" back again. "Looks like we're heading right."
Donald grumbled something that she didn't think sounded particularly complementary, but since he wasn't being that obnoxious about things, Sarah paid it no mind and the four of them hurried over to what very well might end up being their next battleground. Sarah recalled the Keyblade as she ran, since there was a better than average chance that they were going to end up having to face off against more Heartless when they got to where they were going. The aforementioned destination turned out to be an alley that seemed to be used just as much for surplus-storage as the darkened room that the four of them had teleported into in the first place.
And, naturally, it was also full of Heartless that turned their attention to three out of the four members of their group as soon as they'd set foot into said alley.
Blasting four of these new kind – those wearing curly shoes, turbans, and Hammer pants – out of existence with a Thunder Lance, Sarah shifted to target the Soldiers who'd been standing to the right of them. Moving back-to-back-to-back with Donald and Goofy, it only took them what felt like a few minutes to clear out this latest group of Heartless, and then they were free to take not of what else might have been in this alleyway, aside from wicker baskets and the occasional crate.
Things like the young woman in the fancy, turquoise harem-girl outfit, who was just starting to peek her head out from behind the three crates that seemed to be the only ones of their kind in this place. Sarah wondered for a moment just how anachronistic this kind of thing truly was, then forcibly turned her attention to more important matters.
"Are you all right back there, miss?"
"Jasmine," a very different, very male voice answered, before the young woman could so much as open her mouth. "Princess Jasmine, in fact."
Turning to look at just where it was that this newcomer's voice was coming from, Sarah found herself and her compatriots facing a tall, thin man in rich-looking, black-and-red robes, a fancy black turban with a red feather, brown curled shoes, and a bright, rich red cape that stopped just short of pooling around his feet.
"So," she said, flicking her gaze over his form as he stood over them in a way that his body-language clearly indicated was meant to be intimidating; Sarah was hardly impressed. "You know each other?"
"Certainly, young man," the man said, his tone giving the impression of a smile, though she was a bit too far to clearly see his face. "I am Jafar, royal vizier to the Sultan of Agrabah," here, he gave a shallow but extravagant bow, flourishing his cape as he did so. "The Princess and I are very well acquainted."
"Don't listen to him!" the young woman, presumably the aforementioned Princess, shouted as she stood up from behind the trio of crates that she'd been hiding behind. "He's the one who brought these monsters to Agrabah! He's the one responsible for all the people they've taken!" she stepped over to their little group, gently interposing herself between Sarah and Goofy. "I'm sorry for startling you, but Jafar has been doing everything in his power to undermine my father and take the throne of Agrabah for himself," she said.
"Your father is an incompetent, bumbling fool!" Jafar shouted, his composure clearly having deserted him. "I deserve to be Sultan!"
Sarah found that she couldn't quite manage to hold back a laugh at that bold, decisive, and utterly wrong-headed pronouncement.
"What do you find so amusing, boy?!"
"I've heard this said about kings before, but I never thought I'd actually meet someone it applied to so well," she snarked, grinning up at Jafar where he stood, even as she reached down into Sora's right pocket; it was always best, after all, to have an escape route ready and waiting when you were about to piss off someone as obviously unstable as ol' Jafar here.
"And what would that be, boy?"
"Anyone who has to say they're the king is no true king at all," she said, curling "her" right hand around Marahute's summon gem as she directed her next words to the group gathered around her. "Be prepared to jump."
"That's right!" Jasmine shouted defiantly up at Jafar, as the man continued to stand, overlooking them all; she knew by the way his fists were clenching that he wasn't taking their words well, however. "You could never be a good Sultan! You don't care about anyone but yourself!" Jasmine finished her sentence at a low, contemptuous snarl, but before Jafar could go off on them the way anyone with eyes could tell he was about to, Sarah raised the summon gem she'd grabbed.
"Jump!" she commanded, quickly suiting actions to words as she called upon Marahute to get them all out of there. "Hold on!"
The alleyway, and soon enough the entire city, fell away beneath them as Marahute flapped her mighty, golden wings, driving them farther and higher into the air.
"So, do you know anyone you can actually trust around here?" she asked Jasmine, once Marahute had found a steady thermal updraft to soar on and their flightpath had hence been allowed to level off.
"Yes," Jasmine said, her tone a lot happier and more relived; Sarah didn't have to think long about why that might be. "His name is Aladdin," she laughed softly, reaching out to lay a gentle hand on "her" left shoulder. "This is almost exactly like how we first met, though first he helped me to escape from the palace guards through the streets," smiling a bit wider, Jasmine reached down to run her fingers through the soft, white feathers that covered Marahute's neck. "I've never flown on the back of a Roc before, though Aladdin does have a magic carpet. You said your Roc's name was Marahute, right?"
"That's right," she confirmed. I also never said she was a Roc, Sarah mused.
Still, explaining the concept of giant eagles like Marahute, as opposed to the giant avians that Jasmine was presumably familiar with would take too long, and might end up skirting entirely too close to the information her compatriots wanted to keep strictly need-to-know.
"Sora, there are more of those monsters down there!" Jasmine exclaimed suddenly, quickly drawing Sarah's attention back to the present and the matters at hand therein. "It looks like they're attacking someone! We have to help them!"
"All right, time for some thrilling heroics," she muttered, shifting so that she was closer to Marahute's head, even as she swept her gaze over the fracas taking shape below them. "Marahute?" the eagle gave a short, sharp sound in response. "Take us down."
They went into a steep dive as Marahute folded her wings, bracing themselves against each other as the diving eagle snapped them back open once she was close enough to the ground, turning to fly a tight circle around the ring of Heartless, sending large groups of them rolling and tumbling away with great flaps of her mighty wings. When the six of them were able to stand on solid ground again, Sarah saw that there had indeed been someone trapped within that ring of Heartless.
Evidently, he was the one that Jasmine had been speaking so fondly of, because the first thing the pair of them did when they caught sight of each other was to exclaim the other's name and then run right over to kiss. Sarah chuckled softly as Marahute looked down at the happy couple with what seemed to be the closest to an expression of fond amusement as she could manage with a face like hers.
Turning her own gaze away from the pair of them, more than aware by this point that she and hers were the only real force standing between the seemingly unending legions of Heartless and all of the people they continued to threaten with their unchecked rampage, Sarah searched for any stragglers. However she noted, with some surprise, that there didn't actually seem to be any present anymore.
Either Marahute had splattered this particular group on her way down, or Donald and Goofy had taken it upon themselves while her attention had been otherwise occupied. Either way, she was hardly going to complain, since it was all to the good as far as she was concerned.
"Sora, isn't it wonderful?" Jasmine asked, smiling almost giddily as she leaned against Aladdin's right shoulder. "Aladdin found the magic lamp! Now we can be married!"
"Oh, were you on a quest?" she asked, curious to know just what his circumstances had been; she didn't really remember from the game, and she'd never actually watched the movie that had inspired this particular world. "You know: find the rarest of treasures and return with it, then you get to marry the princess? I've heard that's the way it works, sometimes."
Jasmine laughed lightly, after a thoughtful expression had passed over her face while Sarah had been speaking. "That's not exactly how it works in Agrabah, Sora. My father… Well, there's a law that says I can only marry a prince…"
"That's why Iwent out to find this lamp," Aladdin said, swiftly taking up the narrative, himself. "Legend has it that the genie inside can grant any three wishes you want. So, I could just wish to be a prince, and then Jasmine and I would be able to get married, no problem," he finished, holding out what was doubtless the aforementioned magic lamp.
It was certainly a well-made piece of metalwork, whatever its other properties happened to be. Thought, to be fair, it also looked like it could use more than a little spit and polish, so to speak. Sarah briefly wondered it that kind of thing was even possible in this kind of case, or if the genie would be offended at being asked to wait for something like that.
"Do you mind if we fly back to Agrabah on your Roc, Sora?" Aladdin asked, as he and Jasmine made their way over to where she, Donald, and Goofy were all standing, next to Marahute. "I mean, I have a magic carpet, but-"
"No, it's all right," she interjected gently. "I think she likes having the opportunity to stretch her wings."
Marahute crowed proudly, in what was pretty clearly meant to be a sign of agreement with what the rest of them had been talking about, and so their enlarged group of six all climbed up onto her back and braced themselves as she made a running take-off back into the air again. Once Marahute had made it a comfortable distance from the ground, with the sand-swept vista of Agrabah – she wondered briefly if that was the name of the capital city, the city-state, the province, or the entire country – coming clearly into view once more, she could hear the awe plain in everyone's voices as they talked about it.
She smiled; it wasn't everyone who got the chance to see their home from this high up.
Letting Aladdin guide their flightpath back to his house, or at least the place where he was currently staying – since the term "house" could only be loosely applied to what amounted to a one-room shack made out of sandstone brick below them – before they landed and she dismissed Marahute to spare herself further drain on her personal stores of Mana.
"So, who else got hungry on that flight over?" she asked, suspecting that she knew the answer but wanting confirmation all the same.
"Sorry," Aladdin said, before anyone else had the chance to answer. "But I don't really have enough to share."
"Don't worry about it," she said easily. "I always come prepared," she continued, setting her supply-pack down so she could get inside it more easily.
"Is that one of those monsters?" Jasmine asked, as Kuromaru hopped down onto the makeshift bed that Sarah had positioned herself next to while she got out the food and drink she'd carried with her since before this whole thing had started.
"Something like that," she said, glancing briefly at Jasmine before turning her attention to Donald and Goofy. "So, would you guys like ham or turkey?" she asked, handing over the indicated food to the anthros who'd asked for them.
"What's turkey?" Aladdin asked, after a few moments of rather contemplative silence.
"It's a domestic fowl from back home," she said, taking out a pair of turkey sandwiches for herself.
In the end, turkey sandwiches seemed to be the favorite, and both Aladdin and Jasmine seemed to find them a rather novel thing. Particularly the mustard and mayonnaise, which she told them as much about as she could remember. Sharing some of her milk to wash the sandwiches down, Sarah breathed more easily as she leaned back against the cool, sandstone-brick wall of the place where Aladdin had clearly stayed for some time, if the way he'd gotten it set up was any indication.
"All right," the man in question said, sitting up straighter as he pulled the lamp out again. "Let's see what this magic lamp can really do."
He rubbed the side nearest to him rather vigorously, while the rest of them watched in varying shades of interest. The solid metal of the lamp – seemingly some sort of bronze, insofar as she could tell – distorted slightly, before blue smoke that was a few shades darker than the sky outside began to pour out of the spout. Slowly, it took the shape of a large, humanoid figure that hovered low over the six of them.
"Gooood Morning Agrabah!" the genie exclaimed happily, once he'd fully reformed from the smoke.
He was impressively large, and rather impressively blue as well, but Sarah didn't have time to take note of much more than that before Kuromaru leaped back up onto "her" lap, and she saw the forms of those same, turban-wearing Heartless starting to climb through the open spaces that passed for windows to get at them.
"Guys!" she called, standing and letting Kuromaru swing itself up onto "her" back as she recalled the Keyblade to hand. "We've got company!"
As she was bracing herself to clear the swiftly-advancing ranks with a quick cast of her Thunder-Whip, before she'd inevitably be forced to engage the others blade-on-blade, Sarah heard Aladdin's voice calling out to the genie.
"Don't you only get three of those?" she asked, after he'd used one of his wishes to clear the room of invading Heartless.
"I didn't want any of you getting hurt," he said, as she dismissed the Keyblade and allowed herself to relax a bit. "Besides, well," he continued, looking more than a little sheepish. "This place isn't the most stable, but it's the only home I have right now."
"That makes sense," she said, knowing that she wouldn't have been particularly eager to bunch of guys starting a huge, destructive brawl in her house, either. "We should get out of here quickly if we don't want to risk them coming back; there's a lot more where those came from."
There was a general consensus on that point and Sarah, who'd been quick to pack up after the six of them had finished lunch, grabbed her supply-pack and slung it back up onto "her" back. The soft sound of Kuromaru opening the zipper to let itself in was soft enough to be almost inaudible over the sound of tramping feet as Aladdin led them all out of his place and back down to the sand-swept streets below.
"We should keep moving if we don't want them to swarm us again," she said, as the rest of their group seemed to be looking for another place to settle down. "There's an army of Heartless out there, and I'm willing to bet I know who brought them."
"Jafar!" Jasmine snarled, likely having had her own dealings with the man in the past, considering their respective positions.
"I knew that two-faced son of a jackal was up to something!" Aladdin snapped, fists clenching in obvious fury. "Sora, I know you probably don't have a stake in this, since you could go anywhere in the Seven Deserts on that Roc of yours, but would you help me and Jasmine save Agrabah from Jafar and these Heartless of his?"
"That's pretty much the reason we came here in the first place, Aladdin," she said with a small, reassuring smile. "The three of us have been dealing with the Heartless for quite some time now."
As Aladdin and Jasmine both thanked the three of them for their consideration, Sarah found herself wondering about the phrase "Seven Deserts"; something like that could speak volumes about the conditions on this particular planet and the state of the people on it. Not all of it good, and it would have been rather interesting to find out just where and how these people obtained enough water to sustain themselves, if the description she'd heard in that phrase was more than just a metaphor. Still, this was far from the first time that Sarah had found herself compelled by necessity to put her lingering curiosity about a planet and its people aside while she and hers got down to brass tacks.
She doubted it would be the last time, either.
Kuromaru's sudden, agitated shifting sharpened Sarah's focus, just as a patch of what looked like fine-ground grains of obsidian spread out along a nearby wall. Almost as soon as she'd called out the Keyblade to deal with what figured to be more Heartless, a trio of large forms – too thin to be those annoying fireball spouting Heartless, but too tall by half to be the scimitar-wielders who'd caused her so much trouble in KH1 before she'd decided to level-up enough to outright curbstomp them – pulled themselves up and out of the black sand at the base of the wall.
Sarah knew, almost as soon as they had fully appeared, that they weren't Heartless, just by the simple process of elimination: Purebloods like Kuromaru always seemed to be made out of darkness, and that stuff was pretty distinct; and these newcomers entirely lacked the emblems that gave said other variation of Heartless their name. they were dressed in ragged, earth-toned clothes, and their skin was dry and papery enough that – while the thought in itself was extremely annoying – Sarah couldn't easily mistake them for anything else.
"Really? Zombies, too?" she muttered, huffing in exasperation even as she heard the rest of her companions gasping in shock all around her.
"Sora, we need to get out of here! Call your Roc!"
"Go, Marahute!" she declared in response to Aladdin's shout, feeling the now-familiar drain as the giant eagle manifested once again.
Once they'd all gotten on her back and been hurled up into the skies with a few flaps of her huge, mighty wings, Sarah let herself breathe more easily now that they were well out of reach of the zombies.
"Okay, anyone think they can tell me what Dead Men Walking were doing back there?" she asked, once Marahute had leveled off and they were circling safely over the city.
"Well, I can definitely tell you that those were magical constructs," the genie, who'd clearly been summoned again during the course of their daring escape, said with a distasteful shudder. "Really nasty ones, too."
"Ahoy over there!" Riku's familiar voice called, drawing their attention to him and the wyvern-looking Emblem Heartless he was perched on the back of. "Mind if I join you?"
"No objections here," she called back, and happily enough no one else spoke up to contradict her, so she reached out and helped Riku up onto Marahute's back.
"Someone I know said that the creatures you saw down there are called Mamluks, and that the sorcerer controlling them is more treacherous and dangerous than Jafar," Riku reported, but the genie spoke up before he could say anything more.
"He'd have to be, to keep messing around with necromancy like this," he said, shuddering again at whatever thoughts he was having. "That stuff'll eat your soul, if you play around with it too much."
"Well, that doesn't sound pleasant," she muttered, looking down over Marahute's neck to see what she could spot from their present altitude; there were large masses of darkly-colored figures that seemed to be converging on each other from opposite sides of the city. "So, what you're basically saying is that we're going to have Jafar's army of Heartless against this new guy's army of zombies?" she asked Riku, wanting to have at least some clarification as to the fuck-weird situation she seemed to have just stepped in.
"Mamluks, but yeah," Riku said, an amused little grin on his face.
"Lovely," she deadpanned; not only was there the never-ending horde of Heartless down there, they were also going to have to deal with Day of the Living Dead.
"We should find somewhere safe to land, and start making plans to attack," Aladdin said, sounding decisive and thoughtful at once.
"I'm open to suggestions," she said, as Marahute circled ever higher within the thermal up-draft they were presumably riding.
"We could land at the Palace," Jasmine said, after a few moments of what silence one could get when they were this high in the air. "My father's guards will be able to protect us long enough to at least start talking about what to do next."
"Sounds good," she said, a sentiment that was generally shared among their little group of fighters, thieves, wizards, and close-combat mages, so Sarah directed Marahute to land in the courtyard behind the palace that Jasmine directed her to, and then dismissed the eagle to conserve the Mana that she still had left.
"The rest of you wait out here," Jasmine said, spitting from their group so that she could make her way over to the more-than-slightly imposing form of the building before them. "I'll have to speak to my father before he'll agree to let you all in."
"Thanks, Jasmine," Aladdin said, smiling as the pair of them held hands for a lingering moment.
"So, how've you been holding up lately?" she asked Riku, as Aladdin and Jasmine had their Moment.
~KH1~
When he'd first managed to figure out that it wasn't really Sora who'd come through the Darkness that had enveloped their islands when he'd opened himself to it, Riku had confronted the kid as soon as he could. Other than expecting the other kid to deny it as much as he could, which had gone just the opposite of how he'd been expecting, Riku hadn't really had a plan for what he'd do next. That seemed to be just the opposite of how this new kid did things: if he didn't already have a plan all worked out when something came up, he seemed more than ready to get some people together and make one.
Riku couldn't help the thought that this new kid was older than Sora, and it wasn't just because he was a lot more mature than Sora had ever been; he'd even been polite to Maleficent, and that had been really funny to watch.
It'd been a really long time since Riku had found himself wondering what it would've been like to have an older brother, but the more he watched the kid who wasn't Sora talking to all of those other people they kept meeting, the more Riku thought he could get to like the idea.
~KH1~
They'd been provided with a meeting room, some fluffy bread and soft cheese, and a map of the city at her request, after their initial meeting with the ruler of the settlement they'd been flying over.
"So, that's our basic situation," she summed up for the benefit of the Sultan and his chosen cadre of guards. "An army of reanimated corpses on one side, an army of Heartless on the other, and us smack in the middle," she paused for breath and then continued quickly, so as not to lose conversational momentum. "We do have magic on our side, however, and considering how dried-out those corpse-puppets look, I wouldn't bet on them being fireproof."
"Hmm," the genie said, large hand to his round chin as he floated thoughtfully over the center of the map. "They'd probably be able to stand up to normal fire, since any necromancer smart enough to conjure them would have to know how to defend against that kind of thing. Buuut, since we have magic fire, then Bob's your uncle!"
Sarah wondered for a moment if anyone else had understood that particular idiom, and if so from where, but no one commented so she decided not to bring it up; it wasn't important, anyway.
"All right, so here's what we're going to do," she said, once it was clear that everyone had had the chance to absorb the information that Genie – she wondered if that was his real name, or if he'd be offended at someone asking after it – had so generously given out. "Donald, since you're the only one of our group with access to magical fire," not to mention the experience to use it properly, she mused. "You take Goofy and see if you can clear out those parts of the overrun by zombies. Since I'm the one most suited to dealing with Heartless," she summoned and dismissed the Keyblade to emphasize her point. "I'll be heading into the other parts of the city to clear them," she paused for a moment of consideration, before pressing on. "I probably don't need to remind you of this, but try to help with the evacuation when and where you can. Most of the civilians have probably gotten out by now, since we're way past the first signs of trouble, but if you do find people trapped by circumstance, at least give them what help you can."
"Right you are, my boy," the short, fairly rotund, white-bearded man who Jasmine had introduced as her father, the Sultan, said, his expression as grave and serious as those of the men around him. "In fact, I'm going to be sending out units of my own Royal Guard, to follow in your footsteps and ensure that none of my people are caught up in this madness."
"That's nice of you to offer, Your Highness, but you'd best keep them back far enough that they don't get caught up in the fighting, too," she said, turning to give her full attention to the man so that he would come to understand the severity of the situation. "I don't know about the zombies, but the Heartless definitely eat people."
"Yes," the tallest, most burly and serious-looking of the guards said, stepping forward with a deep bow toward the Sultan in his throne. "The boy is right; I may not have known the right name of those creatures before today, but I have seen the damage they leave behind."
Sarah wasn't actually insensitive enough to ask what the man had seen that made him so willing to trust the word of someone who was, in the end, a near-complete stranger; but judging by the look in his eyes, it hadn't been anything good.
"Do what you feel is best, Razoul, but I do not want my people threatened by these monsters any longer!"
"Understood, Your Majesty," Razoul said, bowing deeply to the Sultan on his throne. "I'll be following in your footsteps, boy," he said to her, his tone gruff but not unkind.
Sarah was beginning to get the feeling that that was just the man's default personality.
"I'll do my best to make sure none of them make it past me, sir," she said, reaching out to shake the man's right hand as he offered it to her.
"We both will," she heard Riku say, and turned to look over "her" left shoulder as the silver-haired boy came over to stand next to her. "I'm coming with you, Sora."
"All right, Riku," she said, reaching out to clap his right shoulder as Razoul let go of "her" hand. "Let's see what we can do for this place. You have a way to track Heartless?"
"Not better than the one you have," he said, grinning.
"All right, we'll go with it," she said, looking back over "her" left shoulder as she heard the sounds of people hurrying about their assigned tasks. Donald seemed to have been having his own discussion with the group of guards that had been assigned escort duties for him and Goofy, so as their two groups bid each other farewell and good luck, Sarah found herself wondering if it'd had anything in common with hers besides taking place at the same time. It was of course an idle curiosity, and hence all the more easily ignored when their two groups separated to make their own inroads into the two contested halves of the city.
Once she and Riku had gotten out of Razoul's line-of-sight, Sarah felt his right hand on "her" left arm as he tugged her into the darkened interior of an abandoned stall that seemed to have been selling pottery before all this had started.
"All right, I think we lost him down that last street," Riku said, in a distinctly pleased manner. "So, I know a way to get to the guy in charge of all these Heartless," he continued, grin narrowing into a smirk, though he was clearly just as pleased as before. "But it's not something that just anyone can use."
"Mind telling me just what it is?" Sarah asked, though she had her fair share of suspicions, considering where she was and who she was currently dealing with.
Still, it was best not to be too open with knowledge she couldn't convincingly explain the source of.
"I can do better than that," Riku said, smirk widening back into a grin again.
Thrusting out his right palm, Riku summoned forth a column of purple-black flames that twisted in on themselves, reshaping and reforming into what looked very much like a frameless door that had been somehow sculpted from the faux fire itself. The scent of fresh rain on sun-warmed concrete, the same scent she'd been getting from Kuromaru and hence starting to filter out for the most part, hit "her" nose all the more powerfully as the flames-that-weren't-flames settled into shape, undulating softly.
"I know, it smells really bad," Riku said, the grin he'd been wearing narrowing back into a challenging smirk. "Still, it is the fastest way to get to the guy causing all the trouble in this half of the city."
"Fair enough," she said, stepping through the "fiery" portal beside Riku. "Pretty," she muttered, tilting "her" head back take in the shifting, ever-changing patterns of purples and dark-blues that made up the new sky of wherever it was that they were currently walking through; the place that figured to be a Corridor of Darkness.
"You think it's pretty here?" Riku asked, his tone carrying the same incredulity as his expression, when she turned to look back at him.
"Have you ever really stopped to look at the colors up there, Riku?" she asked, tilting "her" head slightly as she studied the silver-haired boy for a long moment, even as the pair of them kept up a brisk pace through the Corridor itself. "They're very soothing."
"I guess," Riku said uncertainly, after a quick glance at what passed for the sky in this strange place-between-places.
"By the way, what does this place smell like to you, anyway?" she asked, figuring that there'd be few more opportune times to ask such a question than when the pair of them were inside the very thing she was curious about.
"It doesn't smell bad to you?" Riku asked, his attention snapping right back to her from wherever it had wandered while the pair of them had continued on their way.
"How does it smell bad in here?" she asked, her curiosity having long since been piqued by the clearly divergent ways that the two of them were experiencing things in this strange place-between-places.
"Well, what does it smell like to you in here?" Riku asked in turn, though for his part he seemed less curious and more confused.
"You know that smell when the first few drops of a rainstorm hit the sidewalk? Have you ever smelled that?" she asked, turning to Riku again.
"That's what it smells like to you, huh?" Riku muttered, though given the faraway expression he was wearing, Sarah didn't really think that that was the first thing on his mind, at the moment.
He shook himself, before she could ask what had been on his mind, however, stating that the pair of them had arrived at their present destination.
Recalling the Keyblade with a muted flash of light, just before the pair of them exited the Corridor and made their way back into Agrabah proper, Sarah crouched low and moved, quick and quiet, through what passed for an exit. The pair of them reappeared just inside another stall – this one smelling ever-so-faintly like apples – and Sarah smirked tightly as she saw the scrawny, ostentatiously-dressed form of Jafar standing at the center of a bustling group of various Heartless.
"Good work, Riku," she said, reaching out to clap his nearby left shoulder.
"So, what's the plan?" Riku asked, voice growing ever-so-slightly louder as he crouched down beside her; from the corner of "her" left eye, she could see him grinning.
"Already taken care of," she said, channeling her gathered Mana into the Keyblade.
Taking aim at Jafar's right shoulder, since that was the hand he was using to hold the cobra-headed staff he used to make expansive gestures while commanding his groups of Heartless. Giving the command that gave shape, form, and function to this particular spell under her breath, Sarah let fly with a Thunder Lance. As Jafar staggered, staff falling from his suddenly nerveless grasp, Sarah darted out from behind her and Riku's impromptu cover, dismissed the Keyblade in almost the same motion as she swept up that same staff, and slammed the shaped end directly into Jafar's gut last of her residual momentum.
Before the man could regain his breath or make any real effort to right himself after the impact, Sarah hammered him again in the same place, dropped low to the ground to sweep his feet from under him, and smashed him in the small of his back with the cobra's snout to down long enough for her to finish the job. Shifting her grip on the staff, Sarah brought it down on the back of his neck like an executioner's axe. Jafar spasmed briefly when she hit him, but only once, and he fell limp to the ground right afterwards; so she was at least reasonably sure that she'd put him down for the count.
There'd be no harm in making sure he was out of the way, of course.
Nudging him a few times with the staff she'd appropriated, Sarah let herself relax a bit when he didn't react.
"Kuromaru," she directed over "her" right shoulder, even as she took note of Riku's approaching footsteps on the sand. "Could you fetch me a spear and a pair of ropes?"
The little Shadow nodded, hurrying off into the streets and out of sight, even as Riku came up to stand next to her.
"That was quick," the silver-haired boy said, with a slight warble in his tone that Sarah thought sounded like he was trying not to laugh.
"Best to have these kinds of things over and done with as quickly as possible," she said, turning her attention from Kuromaru's barely-visible tracks in the sand to Riku's questioning face. "Less chance of too many people getting hurt that way."
She didn't know if Riku fully understood what she meant, but he didn't really look like he was going to question her anymore on the subject, so she figured that whatever curiosity he had actually possessed had been satisfied.
When Kuromaru came back with what she'd requested, Sarah got right to immobilizing Jafar and lashing him to the spear that Kuromaru had managed to find.
"You think you managed to tie him up tight enough now?" Riku asked with a laugh, once she'd finished securing Jafar's arms and legs so that he wouldn't be able to twist loose unless he was a professional-level contortionist; or he called for some
Heartless to help him, but she had the feeling that – even among the people who spent the most time working with Heartless – the relationship that she and Kuromaru shared was unique. She still didn't quite know what to make of that, but all things considered, that kind of speculation could wait.
At least until all of this was over and done with.
"How far do those passages of yours reach?" she asked, turning back to Riku after she'd managed to finish securing Jafar for transport; once more annoyed that she'd been forced to inhabit Sora's body.
This kind of thing would have been so much easier if she'd still had her normal physical capabilities.
"You mean the Corridors of Darkness?" Riku asked in return, wearing that cocky, self-assured smirk that she'd become more than a little familiar with over the course of the one-and-just-over-a-half games that she'd played involving him.
Or played as him, in the case of the unfinished story in Re: Chain of Memories.
"Yeah, those," she said, crouching so that she could hoist Jafar's bound, unconscious form up onto "her" left shoulder to make the man simpler to carry. "Would you mind giving me a hand with this guy?"
"Oh, sure," Riku said, his earlier cockiness replaced by confusion.
"Now, about the Corridors," she said, once Riku had gotten the butt-end of the spear settled on his right shoulder. "Do you think we could take this guy through without getting him eaten?"
"I," Riku looked from her to Jafar and back, before sighing softly. "Well, I don't really know. I've never taken anyone through who wasn't conscious."
Sarah sighed; while she wasn't particularly surprised to hear something like that, she was still more than a bit annoyed at how incurious Riku was. Really, if she'd had the cooperation, or at least the resources, of someone like Maleficent, she'd have been politely pumping them for information at every possible opportunity. Still, Riku was Riku, and she had to deal with that.
"Well, if even you don't know, I guess we shouldn't risk it," she decided, after a moment's consideration. "C'mon, let's get this chump to the guards. They can probably handle him in this condition."
"Uh, sure," Riku said, chuckling for some reason or other.
Sarah had other things on her mind at the moment, and so couldn't spare the time to try figuring out Riku's present state of mind at the moment.
When Jafar inevitably regained consciousness, ranting about something or other that Sarah wouldn't have cared about even if she had bothered to listen, she rolled "her" eyes.
"Kuromaru, shut him up," she ordered, and not long after, she heard the unmistakable sound of someone being punched repeatedly in the throat. "Thanks, boy," she said, turning to look down at the little Shadow as it fell into step beside "her" left hand.
Riku started snickering just after that, and Sarah smirked slightly in response. The pair of them continued on their way through the city, Sarah advising the few civilians they ran across to make for the center of the city, where the Royal Guard would be waiting to take them to shelter. Whatever shelter could be found at a time like this, anyway.
When she, Riku, and Kuromaru met up with Razoul, she smirked in response to the broad, almost feral grin that spread over the large man's face when he caught sight of them.
"We come bearing gifts," she said, smirking all the wider as she and Riku hauled their captive over to where Razoul and his people were gathered, as they presumably saw to organizing the search-and-rescue efforts that were doubtless still in progress considering the size of the city around them. "Well, a gift, at least," she continued, cheerfully pushing the haft of the spear off of "her" shoulder and watching Jafar face-plant in the sand after he'd started working up to a rant again.
"We'll be happy to take him off your hands," Razoul said, eyes roaming over Jafar's restrained form as though he couldn't quite decide whether he was going to start punching or kicking first.
Either way, Sarah seriously doubted that Jafar was going to enjoy the time he spent in custody; rather the point, she expected. Setting that rather amusing thought aside, Sarah focused on more pressing business.
"Have all of your citizens managed to make it out all right, or would you like me to make a last sweep for stragglers?"
"No need," Razoul said, reaching out to clasp "her" right shoulder, after a couple of his underlings had taken charge of Jafar. "Everyone knows to run when they see strange creatures appearing." Razoul smiled down at the boy everyone still thought she was. "Thank you for your concern, but you truly should go help your companions deal with those corpse-men that still roam the streets on the whim of that mad necromancer."
"Right," she said, giving a sharp nod, even as she turned her gaze back to Riku. "You up for this?"
"Of course I am," Riku said, that same look of supreme self-confidence appearing on his face again.
"Good," she said, nodding sharply. "Let's get going, then."
Bidding farewell to Razoul and his people, and wishing them luck for good measure, she and Riku left them behind as the pair of them made their way out of the man's range of vision.
"Back there, why did you only say that you would go out and look for people?" Riku asked, sounding like he was trying to decide whether to be annoyed or not.
"I wasn't going to speak for you, Riku," she said, sparing him a glance as the three of them climbed into an empty vendor's stall so that they could be safely out of sight for the next step of their journey.
"Oh. Well, thanks," Riku said, the dubious expression on his face settling into a smile once more.
"Can you open up another of those Corridors of yours?" she asked, then had a brief, rather troublesome thought. "Preferably not in the middle of a group of zombies?"
"Yeah," Riku said, chuckling. "I'll try to avoid the zombies when we come to the end of the Corridor," then he laughed, in that disbelieving way that people did when they were facing something so far removed from their everyday experience that laughing was the nearly the only thing they could do. "Heartless on one side, zombies on the other. This is so weird."
"And here we are, stuck in the middle," she mused aloud, as the scent of fresh rain hit "her" nose, and she followed Riku into the open Corridor. "I meant to ask you this before, but what does this place smell like to you?"
"I don't really know how to describe it," Riku said tersely. "Just bad."
She'd have made some kind of a joke, just to break the tension that was clearly getting the better of Riku, but she knew that this kind of thing was one that required a fair bit of focus on the part of the person working with the Corridor. Still, it was one more thing to remember about this particular mode of transportation: the need for such deep concentration wasn't a hang-up that shipboard travel shared.
The pair of them reemerged in a deserted, wind-swept alley, and the fact that there were no other footprints in the area let Sarah know that she and Riku were indeed the only ones present.
"Nice set-down," she said, clapping Riku's right shoulder as she sniffed the air for any signs of nearby zombies.
"Why do you keep sniffing around like that?" Riku asked, as the pair of them fell into step with each other and made their way out of the alley. "We're outside the Corridor, and the Darkness doesn't smell nearly as strong out here."
She chuckled softly. "If you'd ever smelled rotting meat, you wouldn't be asking me that," she said, then paused as a thought came to her almost unbidden. "Of course, considering where we are at the moment, it's entirely possible that those corpses naturally mummified, so that would mean that they wouldn't smell bad enough to be spotted from far-off," she said, continuing to scan the nearby streets for the shambling forms of the zombies she'd briefly glimpsed before going off to hunt down Jafar with Riku's assistance. "Either way, we're going to have to keep an eye out for them."
Riku chuckled, himself, just after she'd finished speaking, and Sarah wondered just what it was that he'd found so amusing. "You don't act like Sora at all," and she could practically hear the wide grin on his face. "He was never this grown up."
Tempted to quote C.S. Lewis at him for a long moment, Sarah settled for rolling "her" eyes as the pair of them continued on their way through the deserted streets of the desert city.
The sounds of running feet, interspersed with battlecries and the chatter of combat drew Sarah's attention to another part of the city, just a few streets over, and when she looked back at Riku, she found that the silver-haired boy looked fairly excited by what he was hearing. And he calls Sora a kid, she mused, tilting "her" head in the direction of the sounds drifting their way. Riku was off like a shot in the indicated direction, and with a laugh and another roll of "her" eyes, Sarah was off after him.
Naturally, it didn't take them long at all to catch up with the remainder of their group, but once they did, it quickly became obvious that the others had had things well in hand without them.
"Good to see you guys held up so well," she greeted, after a moment's pause to catch her breath.
"What happened with Jafar?" Aladdin demanded, seeming to be continuing a conversation she hadn't been present for.
"Let's just say he's a little tied up at the moment," she said, with a small, amused smile.
Riku chuckled in the background, but Sarah herself was more interested in whatever else Aladdin might have had to say.
"You're sure he won't be causing us any more trouble?"
Before she could tell the man that she was at least reasonably sure that Jafar wouldn't be able to escape his present circumstances – considering the fact that he had several co-conspirators, but also taking into account just how capricious nearly all of them could be, particularly since one of them was a fairy – a swirl of that same, obsidian-toned sand came surging up out of the ground all around them. She was half-expecting more of those weird zombies to start popping up, since that kind of strangeness wasn't likely to be unrelated to the kind of strangeness that would see obsidian sand appearing in a place that didn't have nearly the right type of rocks to make that kind of thing possible.
However, when she felt a sharp tug on "her" ankles, Sarah barely had time to shout for everyone to brace themselves before she found herself pulled underground along with the rest of her traveling companions. No one sane could say that the trip they were all forced to take – dragged along by what felt like an all-too-real grip around the ankle – was in any way pleasant, but at least it was over quickly. Blinking as she found herself back on "her" feet alongside the others – surrounded by Arabian zombies, natch – Sarah found herself more than a little surprised by the appearance of the man who'd presumably called all of these zombies up from whatever resting places that these particular corpses had been laid out in.
"Distant relation, you think?" she directed at Aladdin.
"I… don't really know," the man in question said, sounding fairly confused.
Sure, no one who'd seen the two of them standing together could really mistake one for the other, but there was still a definite resemblance: the same general facial-structure, about the same height, and the tufts of hair poking out of this new guys turban were the same shade as Aladdin's own. Not that black wasn't a common shade here, but still. The most striking differences between the pair of them was this new guy's creamy, pale skin and softer, more pronounced lips; Sarah wondered, for a moment, just how that kind of thing was possible in the desert, but that kind of thing wasn't important at the moment.
This new guy was surrounded by the zombies and that weird, obsidian sand; it was a pretty safe bet that he was the one responsible for this particular outbreak, in the same way that Jafar was responsible for the Heartless.
"So, you're Mozenrath," Riku said, smirking up at the man now standing at the forefront of what looked very much like the beginnings of a brand new zombie horde.
"That's right," the man in question said, grinning smugly. "I am Mozenrath, Lord of the Land of Black Sand, and soon to be Lord of the Seven Deserts, as well!"
"If I had a nickel for every time I heard that," she muttered, rolling "her" eyes.
"Sora's right!" Aladdin shouted, his tone a sharp challenge where hers had been sarcastically amused. "If we had a shekel for every time we heard someone like you say that, we'd all be rich! But we defeated them, and we'll defeat you, too!"
"Big words," Mozenrath retorted, sounding amused in a way that let Sarah know that they were going to be facing some interesting times in the not-too-distant future. "Let's see if you can back them up."
"Lovely," she muttered, as the obsidian sand spread out all around them, and more of those shabbily-dressed zombies began pulling themselves out of it. Still, she knew pretty much the perfect way to deal with zombies; particularly dried-out, mummified ones like these seemed to be. Breathing deeply as she centered herself and gathered her Mana, Sarah recalled the Keyblade and aimed it at a group of zombies that had nearly pulled themselves out of the ground right in front of her. "Fire Lance!"
The ensuing battle was fairly chaotic, but given the nature of combat in pretty much every game she'd ever played, Sarah really hadn't been expecting anything different. Her idea of burning the zombies caught on quickly once everyone saw how well it worked, so at least they were able to clear out the first wave fairly quickly. Still, there were two obstacles that remained to be dealt with: the never-ending wave of zombies that she and hers were being forced to power their way through, and the fact that Mozenrath didn't look to be getting tired of this whole song and dance anytime soon.
That was going to be a problem, to say nothing of the problems they were having at the moment, but in this case solving one would most likely solve the other for them.
Forcing her way through the press and clash of zombies all around her – some of them on fire, whose numbers she added to when presented the opportunity – Sarah made her way over to Riku. She could remember a particularly troublesome enemy unit that could be put to good use under the circumstances: fireball-shooting Heartless that would be perfect for the kind of aerial-bombardment it was starting to look like they needed here and now.
"Riku, you said that your associate gave you command of the Heartless, right?" she asked.
"Maleficent, and yeah, she did," Riku said, smirking. "How many do you need?"
"Depends," she said, then swung herself around Riku, trailing a ring of fire that swiftly expanded in all directions to cremate the zombies that had begun closing in around them after their incinerated brethren had burned themselves out. "How many flying ones do you have that can breathe fire?"
"Well, I don't know about breathing it, but if you want fire," Riku smirked holding up that strange, bat-wing looking sword of his, and the sky above and all around them was suddenly filled with an uncountable number of small, red-cloaked Heartless with very, very tall hats. "I can definitely give you fire."
"All right," she said, nodding sharply as she turned her attention back to Riku. "Get those guys to hold off the zombies. You and I are going to be dealing with Mozenrath."
She took brief note of the supremely pleased expression on Riku's face, but left that thought behind as the pair of them advanced on Mozenrath's position through a hail of quite literal covering fire. When they were finally able to close with the necromancer, Sarah caught sight of the odd, single leather glove that he wore on his right hand. The thing wasn't any more ornate than the rather elaborate outfit he was wearing – in fact it was quite a bit less so, looking as it did like one half of a pair of work gloves – but there was still something unsettling about the thing.
It could have just been because it was a part of Mozenrath's whole necromancer getup, and hence had probably absorbed a metric fuckton of evil magic from both Mozenrath himself – whether or not he'd created the thing to begin with – and wherever that "Land of Black Sand" that he'd claimed to be ruler of ended up being, but she couldn't have said for certain. In either case, there was something off about the thing, so Sarah made a mental note to keep an eye on it.
The fact that Mozenrath used it as a conduit for his magic, in much the same way that Sarah herself was using the Keyblade, gave at least something of an explanation for the unsettling feeling she got when faced with the thing; still, there was probably more to the story than just that.
Not that she really expected to be able to find out the rest of said story; not without access to a Wiki, which was clearly out of the question, considering her present circumstances.
Closing with Mozenrath under the cover of one of Riku's own attacks, Sarah slammed the Keyblade down on the inside of his right arm, just below the elbow. Mirroring her attack on Squall back when the pair of them had first met.
Unlike Squall, however, Mozenrath didn't react at all to what would have been a disarming blow on pretty much anyone not wearing specialized armor. Sarah allowed herself a brief moment of "the fuck?!" before she shifted her stance, her grip on the Keyblade, and cracked Mozenrath across the jaw with the toothed end.
That did the job, stunning the necromancer long enough for her to kick his left leg out from under him, and further allowing her to catch him across the throat with the Keyblade. Grabbing both ends of the Keyblade, Sarah drove the middle section – what might have been called the blade, if one was being particularly generous – into his throat as she kept him in a stranglehold.
"Do you really need me for this part?" Riku asked, sounding faintly dubious.
"I'm gonna need you to keep those zombies off my back," she said, bracing Sora's full weight Mozenrath's weakening struggles. "This'll take awhile."
"Oh, right," Riku said, chuckling softly. "That's different."
~KH1~
Grinning as he commanded his Red Nocturnes to keep shooting fire at all the Mamluks pulling themselves up and out of that weird black sand that Mozenrath had surrounded them with, he turned to check on how the kid who everyone else thought was Sora was doing. He looked pretty okay, though watching him choke someone out with the Keyblade was kind of funny; Sora would have never done anything like that.