Feeling one of the straps of her supply-pack clutched in "her" left hand, Sarah looked down to see Kuromaru standing at "her" feet, looking up as it held the main body of the pack. The formerly bright yellow canvas of the pack had turned an ashen sort of gray, but the only changes to Kuromaru had been to the collar that Yuffie had bought for her back in Traverse Town: the bright red of the band had turned dark black, and gained a row of spikes like the archetypical bulldog collar. The charm itself, once a simply gold colored disc with Kuromaru's name engraved into it, had turned a bright metallic orange, taking on the rough shape of a jack 'o lantern with a pair of carved-out eyes peering over the black-embossed name in the center of the charm.
The weight of cloth on "her" shoulders drew Sarah's attention to what she herself had ended up in for this leg of their long journey. For the most part, the outfit she was wearing seemed to come in shades of black and dark gray, and the outfit itself seemed to be some sort of bodysuit adorned with belts and zippers. Always with these things, she mused, shaking "her" head and feeling the tickle of a single lock of hair that had fallen down between "her" eyes.
"Could you do something about this?" she asked Donald, knowing that the inevitable itching when she actually started to move would drive her nuts if she left things as they were.
"What?" Donald turned, looking like someone's attempt at making an Egyptian mummy based purely off of second-hand descriptions; he clearly took in the way she was pinching the end of the lock of hair in an effort to keep it out of "her" face. "Oh, sorry."
"No harm done," she said, as she felt the drake's magic sliding easily over the lock of hair, binding it out of "her" face but also making it stick up like some kind of antenna; it was kind of funny, so Sarah decided to go with it.
"You look cool in that, Sora," Riku said, making his way over to stand beside her.
"Thanks," she said, taking a long moment to study the silver-haired boy's form that he'd be wearing for the duration of their stay on this strange little planet.
The first thing she noticed was that Riku's normally silver hair had turned stark white, along with the skin of his face; his usual outfit had also transformed, into what looked like a headless ghost costume. One seemingly made up of differently-shaped and –sized patches of white fabric, all of them seemingly stitched together with thick, grayish thread. Looking more closely at Riku's face, she noticed that there were dark rings that looked like they'd been painted around his eyes.
They looked like kohl, or something like that, and were just thick enough to emphasize his green eyes without making it look like he'd lost a fight with a boxer or anything.
"You look pretty cool yourself, Riku," she said, taking in the way the visible parts of his limbs had taken on a phantasmal aspect, as well, fading in and out of sight even as she watched.
The phantasmal flames floating behind his shoulders were an interesting touch, as well.
"Thanks," he said, smirking and actually seeming to preen.
Sarah swallowed a chuckle, as their group closed ranks – Goofy, she noticed, had become something that resembled Frankenstein's monster – and began making their way toward the center of the town they'd appeared just on the edges of. With the short – well, on her it'd be short, on Sora it covered nearly the entire top half of his body, draping down half of his hands besides – cape that mantled around "her" shoulders, Sarah left Kuromaru in charge of the changed form of her supply-pack.
Sarah found herself wishing, not for the first time, that she could remember at least something about the canon endgame of KH1. Still, that kind of knowledge really depended on her following in Sora's canon footsteps, and given that Riku had just become one of her traveling companions, that kind of knowledge didn't mean as much as it once had.
Sighing as their little group pressed ever onward into the city center, Sarah raised an eyebrow as she caught sight of a rather large group of Heartless, each and every one of them floating listlessly in the courtyard that seemed to make up the town square.
"Well, this is new," she said, reaching out to tap a nearby Heartless – one of those that she'd only been seeing since they'd made it to the planet where Ariel lived: this one had a semi-transparent tail that looked a lot like Riku's limbs, or maybe that was the other way around, and a bulbous head that flopped around limply for all that it didn't seem to have a neck – and then gave the thing a firmer shove when it failed to react.
"None of them are moving," Riku said, prodding what looked like a one-eyed, skeletal mummy with the bat-wing blade that seemed to be his weapon of choice.
"This is really strange," Donald said, shuddering as he raised his staff and closed ranks with her and Riku.
"Gawrsh, what do ya think happened to 'em all?" Goofy wondered aloud, ducking behind his small, round shield as he made his way over to where she, Donald, Kuromaru, and Riku had all gathered together.
"Not a clue," she said, narrowing "her" eyes thoughtfully before turning to look down at Kuromaru. "You make anything of this?" the little Shadow shrugged. "Worth a shot," she muttered, as the five of them looked out on the gathered crowd of insensate-seeming Heartless.
"Oh my, have you come to see the Heartless dance, as well?" asked the tall, gangly skeleton in the in-striped suit that had come up to their group while they had been studying the Heartless arrayed around them.
"You're trying to make the Heartless dance?" Riku asked, an incredulous look on his face as he turned to look up at said skeleton.
"Of course!" the skeleton exclaimed, grinning cheerful; at least as well as anyone could when they didn't have lips. "What could possibly better for a Halloween celebration than a group of dancing Heartless?"
Riku facepalmed, laughing with more than a touch of hysteria. "Great; that's just great," Riku gave her a Look, smirking even as he did so. "I think we've actually managed to find someone weirder than you."
"Oh, you have a Heartless of your own?" the skeleton asked, turning to her with a look of steadily-increasing excitement on his face.
He was really starting to remind her a lot of Leonardo Da Vinci, from Assassin's Creed II: both of them had that air of irrepressible exuberance to them. Time would tell, of course, if the pair of them had anything else in common.
"Kuromaru, come say hi," she called, looking down at the little Shadow as it made its way over to where she and the skeleton were standing.
"You even gave him a name!" the skeleton enthused, grinning all the wider as he crouched down to get a better look at Kuromaru. "That's wonderful!" he looked a bit confused when his gaze fell upon the supply-pack that the little Shadow was currently in charge of, however. "What's that on his back?"
"Supplies," she said. "We travel a lot."
"How exciting!" the skeleton exclaimed, drawing himself back up to his full height again. "I sometimes wish I could go out and travel around, see new sights, but there's always something else for me to do around here," the skeleton continued, with a shake of his head and a morose sounding sigh. "Still, I think this year's Halloween is going to be better than ever!" the skeleton said excitedly, before the expression on his face changed to one of annoyed confusion. "At least, if I can manage to get the Heartless to dance with me," the skeleton held a hand to his chin, actually seeming to narrow his eye-sockets thoughtfully. "I'm going to consult the doctor!" the skeleton exclaimed, turning to look back down at her. "You should come along, too. I'm sure the doctor would be interested in meeting someone with a Heartless of their own."
"All right," she said, nodding as she and her traveling companions plus Riku all fell in behind the skeleton as he turned and left the town square courtyard and its crowd of drifting Heartless.
The six of them made their way up to a small, unadorned door at the base of some kind of aggressively crooked looking tower, and Sarah found herself raising an eyebrow at the sight of what seemed to be an unconscious Heartless – one of the ghosts with no legs, huge hands, and bulbous, neckless heads – laid out neatly on a steel table. Stepping aside to allow the rest of her traveling companions into the room, Sarah folded "her" arms as she waited for the skeleton to finish looking around. Really, he seemed the most excited about all of this.
Sarah would fully admit to being curious, though.
"Hello, doctor!" the skeleton called, with a wave and a bright grin.
"Jack, my boy!" the doctor – a strange looking, bulbous-headed, ghostly-white figure; really, it looked like someone had plucked all of the feathers off of some unfortunate duck, stuffed the results in a lab coat, gloves, and boots, then plopped the whole thing down in what looked like some kind of gothic, motorized wheelchair – called, sounding pleased. "Have you been observing the results of my experiments?"
"I have, and they're very promising," the skeleton – whose name was apparently Jack – said with what seemed to be his usual level of enthusiasm, then his face fell slightly. "But, it seems like your control device isn't working. Do you think it could have broken?"
"Nonsense!" the doctor exclaimed, his nasal tone becoming all the more forceful as he spoke; whatever he was, he seemed to have a lot of pride in his work, which had both good and bad implications. "My devices are always perfect!"
"Oh, then maybe you should take a look at the Heartless my new friend brought with him," Jack said, his enthusiasm returning in full. "Maybe he could help you with your design!"
"A Heartless?" the doctor echoed, a curious, interested expression on his face, as he turned to look at where Jack was pointing.
"Hey," she greeted, raising "her" right hand to wave at him.
"What's your name, young man?" the doctor asked; funnily enough, he was the first one on this little planet to actually do so.
"Sora," she said, ignoring Riku's not-very-well hidden snicker. "Yours?"
"I am Dr. Finklestine, greatest scientific genius in all of Halloweentown," the doctor said, preening rather obviously.
Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it, she didn't say, swallowing a snicker.
Time would tell if the principle held held true in this case, but most people who tried to puff themselves up the way this guy was doing ended up being all talk in the end.
"What is it that you're trying to do?" she asked, making her way over to the bulbous-headed ghost-looking Heartless, neatly laid out on the steel table where it was.
"I have been striving to create a guidance system for the Heartless," Dr. Finklestine said, over the grinding whirr of motors as he moved his chair aside for her.
"What kind?" she asked, slotting herself into the space that Jack and Dr. Finklestine had obligingly cleared for her.
"Why a Heart, of course!" Jack exclaimed, the wide grin that seemed to be his habitual expression right back on his face.
He was really starting to remind her more and more of AC2's Leonardo Da Vinci, though he did seem to be a bit more impulsive than Ezio's friend.
"Of course," she said, looking from the maze of glass tubing that looked like it held FF7-style Mako, to the ghost-looking Heartless on the table. "What've you managed to assemble so far?" she asked, returning her attention to Dr. Finklestine as Jack went over to an oversized book laid out beside the foot of the metal table.
The book itself was nearly the same size as the table it had been laid out on, amusingly enough.
"Hmm, yes, I suppose I could allow you to take a look at the selected ingredients. However," Dr. Finklestine said, his hidden gaze scrutinizing Sora's form deeply, clearly thinking deeply. "In return, you must allow me to examine that fascinating Heartless of yours."
"If Kuromaru agrees to it," she allowed, pacing Dr. Finklestine's wheelchair, right up until the doctor came to a dead halt.
"What?"
"It's his decision," she said, in response to the clear incredulity she could see in Dr. Finklestine's demeanor.
"Are you saying that this Heartless of yours has the capability to think?!" the doctor demanded.
It was about the same level of surprise as she'd seen on the face of anyone else who'd heard her suggest that Kuromaru might not be so mindless as any other Heartless.
"He hasn't given me a reason to doubt that yet," she said, reflecting with some amusement on just how much Kuromaru had changed from your average Heartless.
"Fascinating," Dr. Finklestine said, wheeling himself over to the small table with the book on it.
Raising an eyebrow as she caught sight of what seemed to be the gathered ingredients.
"This is an interesting collection," she said, eyebrow still arched as she looked from the collection back to the doctor who had presumably gathered them together.
"This is all the ingredients you need to make a Heart," the doctor said, pointing each one of them out as he named off what they were presumably meant to represent: "A pulse," he pointed to a live frog, "Terror," a rather large spider, "Fear," he dragged his gloved hand – small enough that she could have closed Sora's fist around it with room to spare – down a pane of glass, producing a long, leathery screech.
"Hope and despair," Jack put in, drawing her attention to a pair of snakes that had been put head-to-tail in a way that seemed almost calculated to remind whoever saw it of an Oroboros.
Well, provided they were even aware of the symbol in the first place, of course.
"We'll also need a container with a lock. Fortunately, I have already taken the precaution of constructing such a device," Dr. Finklestine said, pulling out his creation with a self-satisfied flourish.
Said container did indeed possess a lock, but the lock itself was larger than any key that she'd ever seen before, and Sarah found herself firmly resisting the urge to roll "her" eyes. Why do I get the feeling I know where this is going, she wondered idly, a smirk tugging at "her" lips.
"I can help with that," she said, recalling the Keyblade to "her" right hand as she stepped over to the counter where Jack and Dr. Finklestine were discussing the finer points of their current collaboration.
"Thank you, young man," Dr. Finklestine said, holding out the construct so that she could access its Keyhole more easily.
"You're welcome," she said, narrowing "her" eyes slightly as she considered the construct in front of her; it looked a great deal more like a heart one might find in biology class than the ones she'd seen zipping away from the remains of the Heartless that she and her traveling companions were in conflict with so often. "You know, while those ingredients of yours make for a pretty good start, there's more to making a heart than just what you have here."
"Yes," Dr. Finklestine said, setting the container down on the medical table with a definite air of satisfaction. "I just need to obtain the Memory that Sally keeps with her, and then this control device of mind will be perfect!"
"Well, you've made a good start here, I'll give you that," she said, wondering briefly if her words were going to make any kind of impact, or if she'd have had more luck talking to a wall. "Still, there's more to a heart than just what you're planning to add, here."
"What do you mean?" Dr. Finklestine asked, sounding curious rather than annoyed, so that was good.
"Well, there's joy, curiosity, serenity, happiness," she said, narrowing "her" eyes in thought, even as she unlocked the container Dr. Finklestine was offering her. "Of course, I suppose you could combine the first one and the last, since the both of them are such similar emotions."
Dr. Finklestine hummed softly, setting the patchwork "heart" with its lock down on the counter with the other ingredients gathered there. "I suppose that you may very well be onto something, young man," Dr. Finklestine said, rubbing his chin in thought. "While you track down Sally and obtain the Memory she carries with her, I will gather up these new ingredients of yours."
"That's a wonderful idea, doctor!" Jack called enthusiastically, taking "her" left hand before Sarah could ask if it was really necessary for all six of them to to go out searching for just one person.
The feel of Jack's skeletal hand wrapped around one of "her" own was a rather odd one, even through the gloves she'd ended up wearing, enough so that Sarah almost didn't notice when the skeleton himself turned his attention to her.
"Thank you, Sora," Jack said, a wide grin on his fleshless face as he looked down at the boy people still thought she was. "I don't know what we would have done without your key, and I'm sure those new ideas of yours will help develop a Heart even better for controlling the Heartless!"
She was starting to suspect that Jack really only had one setting – two at most – and that was full steam ahead into whatever he happened to be doing at the moment. It could be a good thing, having someone to provide momentum and drive for a particular project, but the thing about dealing with those kinds of people was that, if they didn't have someone willing to basically sit on them until they got their heads on straight – sometimes literally, which was more than a bit awkward - it was entirely too easy for a person like that to cause all kinds of problems. Not only for themselves, but also for the other people who got caught up in their passions, as well.
When the six of them stopped off at a nearby graveyard, Sarah raised an eyebrow. However, she was far from the only one to find something decidedly odd about their present location.
"Why are we here?" Riku asked, and Sarah could see subtle and not-so-subtle signs of repressed discomfort in his stance and body language.
"Well, you are a ghost," she said, grinning to lighten the tension.
"Hey," Riku said, shooting her a look of consternation, though he was starting to seem rather amused.
"Hay is for horses, Riku," she said, smirking at the silver-haired boy as he came over to give her a light, companionable shove.
"You know what I meant, you weirdo," Riku said, though he looked a great deal more comfortable than he had previously.
Jack's laughter drew their attention back to the skeleton, and the newcomer floating next to him. It almost looked like someone had tried to cut a semi-transparent sheet to look like a dog, but had had only a faint sort of idea of what a dog actually was, and whoever had then stuck a tiny jack 'o' lantern at the tip of the exaggerated muzzle. Because somehow sheet-ghost-dog-thing hadn't quite struck them as being spooky enough.
And sure, she thought the thing was actually pretty cute, but Sarah was fully aware that her own opinion was among the minority on many issues; more often than not, in fact.
"Zero, would you go find Sally for us?" Jack asked the ghost dog, still sounding rather amused, though he'd stopped chuckling some time ago.
Sarah found herself rather amused, after hearing what Jack had named his pet, though she rather doubted that it short for Sub-Zero in this particular case. And anyway, this particular Zero didn't seem to have ever been a Husky. At least not that she could tell.
With Zero to lead them, they were soon able to track down Sally, who turned out to be something that looked like an odd cross between an animated ragdoll and Frankenstein's monster. Sarah figured it fit with the themes of this planet in general and the doctor in particular. Hell, even the names were similar, when you got right down to it.
"Jack, I have a bad feeling about this," Sally said, once Jack had taken the flower – a Forget Me Not, natch – she'd been holding to add to their collection of ingredients.
"What makes you say that?" she asked, before anyone could jump in and dismiss Sally's concerns the way another person – Jack and Riku both seemed equally likely, honestly – might have done.
"Those creatures, the Heartless," Sally shuddered, even as their group of seven all turned and began making their way back to Dr. Finklestine's lab. "I just… They all seem so harmless, and Jack says he can control them, but I just can't help thinking that we're all in grave danger the longer they stay here."
Sarah hummed thoughtfully, narrowing "her" eyes slightly; really, the more people who knew what they were dealing with the better they would be able to protect themselves, even if only by running away or getting what help they could. "You've got good instincts: Heartless are very dangerous," she stepped closer to Sally, so that the pair of them would be able to talk to each other without too much space separating them. "That's why my companions and I have been hunting them down wherever we manage to find them, and that's why I'm giving what help I can to this project of Jack's. I don't know about making them dance, but it might be able to lock them down in an area long enough for someone to summon one of us to deal with the problem," she turned slightly, catching the expression of pleased surprise on Sally's face. "You saw how docile they were, with only whatever it was that the doctor already whipped up to use as a preliminary control device, yeah?"
Sally smiled, though hers was a rather small and uncertain thing. "Thank you for telling me that," she wrung her hands briefly, before looking back up to see that they'd just arrived at their intended destination. "I think that's a much better plan."
The seven of them filed up the spiral staircase for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes, and Sarah was entirely grateful for Dr. Finklestine's offer of a spare chair that she could plop down in and just not move from for awhile. Letting the doctor's explanation for those of them who hadn't been present at the beginning of all of this wash over her, Sarah perked up briefly when she heard what the three new items on the counter had been chosen to represent.
Apparently, the book represented curiosity, the hand-drawn sketch of the moon – one of Sally's, it seemed – represented serenity, and the jack 'o' lantern represented both happiness and joy. The book and the sketch she could understand, because curiosity usually led someone to seek out knowledge, and she knew from personal experience that the sight of the moon could be rather calming. She wondered about the jack 'o' lantern, though; if it had just been chosen for its wide grin, or if there was some deeper reason for it that she wasn't personally equipped to understand.
Yawning deeply, wondering for a moment if anyone present would be particularly offended if she sacked out for a bit, Sarah curled up in the chair she'd been given. Closing "her" eyes, Sarah felt herself pulled into a rather familiar place…
~KH1~
"I'm glad you and Riku are getting along so well," Kairi said, grinning at her from behind a large saucer of popcorn shrimp.
"He's not nearly as much of a muttonhead as I was led to expect," she said, smiling back as she crunched into one of her own onion rings, then washed it down with a long pull from her Shirley Temple. "So, that helps."
Here in this world of dreams and memories, one that only seemed to exist while the three of them were present to inhabit it, it was fully possible to pretend to eat, but the sensory-memory came instantly, and didn't include anything but the taste of a remembered meal unless one actually concentrated on the peripheral sensations when one took a bite.
It was rather interesting to play with, or at least it would have been, if she suspected that experimentation was the furthest thing from the minds of the pair who'd called her here to meet with them.
"So, what's on your mind, MK?" she asked, turning her gaze to the last member of their trio, still in the black-and-gray biker leathers and face-obscuring helmet.
"MK?" he echoed, sounding more confused than she'd heard from him since the pair of them had first met.
"Mystery Kid," she elaborated. "Since neither of us know your name," she continued, then smirked teasingly. "Unless you want me to call you Steve."
Kairi laughed, and Mystery Kid chuckled.
"No, I think I'm fine not having that name," he said, an amused cant to his head, leaning forward slightly, as though he had more to share. "I'll keep searching until I find my own," he said, sounding resolved to his next course of action.
"I'm sure you will," Kairi said, reaching out to gently pat Mystery Kid's folded arms.
All in all, it was a rather pleasant scene, and while Sarah would have like to say a bit longer, she knew that that wasn't possible. Not with all the things that she and hers still had to do…