The five of them – with Kuromaru having once more made itself comfortable inside her supply-pack – made their way out of Fere's firmly docked form, and Riku grabbed "her" shoulders after she'd gotten her pack settled again, leaning in close.
"He wants to meet with you again," Riku said, a conspiratorial smile on his face. "Somewhere closer, this time."
"Should be interesting," she said, as the pair of them made their way out of Fere's cockpit and back through the hangar together.
Once the three of them – or at least the pair who were actually walking – made their way back out into Traverse Town proper, Riku gave "her" right shoulder a gentle, companionable shove.
"There's something I need to take care of," he said, clapping "her" shoulder, conspiratorial smile widening into a grin when she raised an eyebrow in response. "Don't wait up for me."
"If you say so," she said, shaking "her" head, once Riku had vanished into one of those purple-black portals she'd seen him using on several occasions before.
Kuromaru squirmed against "her" back when the portal opened, but settled down quickly once it closed.
Making her way over to where Donald and Goofy were standing, with Squall and Cid starting to come over to meet the pair of them. It'd become something of a tradition for all of them to have dinner together, once she and hers had returned from their various travels. It was kind of a nice thing to come home to, really.
~KH1~
"So, you really think this little thing is going to do anything to Maleficent?" he asked, taking the small bomb that the kid who was still pretending to be Sora had had the Moogles make.
"She certainly seemed to believe so," the faceless man said; it was really weird, knowing that he didn't have a body, but one of the few things that still made some kind of sense was that that kid had been the one to find out about that.
"You're really sure it's a girl borrowing Sora's body?" he asked, as the pair of them got closer to where it felt like they were headed.
The man chuckled softly, and Riku found himself wishing that he had an actual face, so he'd at least have a chance at guessing what he was thinking about. "Those who remain wholly within the Light can often have difficulty seeing things as they truly are," he said, as the pair of them continued down the Dark Corridor that would take them to Hollow Bastion.
"It's just," he stopped, thinking back on Kairi and Selphie, as he tucked away the weird bomb that he'd taken when the Moogles were showing them off. "He doesn't act like any girl I've ever met."
The man in the cloak, the one who'd already helped him to gain more control of the Darkness than Maleficent ever had, chuckled softly.
"Yes, I suppose she is rather unique."
That's one way to put it, he thought, snickering softly as the pair of them continued through the Dark Corridor to Hollow Bastion.
"She said that these weapons of hers would burn Maleficent 'like acid', did she not?" the man in the cloak asked, and Riku thought he sounded either happy or like he thought something was funny.
"I think so," he said, taking that weird bomb out of his pocket again.
"I suppose we should test it, then," he said, hood turning back to look at Riku as the both of them stopped.
It was really weird to think about, that the guy he was talking to didn't have a body. Still, it didn't surprise him at all that that weird kid had been the one to find out about that. Boy or girl, that kid didn't think like a normal person at all.
"We're there?" he asked, looking back at the man in the cloak.
He was pointing to what seemed to be just another patch of the weird, solid Darkness that all of the Corridors around them seemed to be made of. It was still weird, though he did kind of like the way he and the cloaked man could make it between Worlds without bothering with a ship.
"Indeed we are," the man said, as the Corridor's exit sprang up in front of them.
"All right, then," he said, smirking slightly as he tucked his right hand back in his pocket.
He'd kept a good grip on the powder bomb ever since he'd taken it off of the table where the Moogles had been showing the rest of them off. As he stepped out of the Corridor and back into the round room where Maleficent and the others who'd all joined up with her kept meeting to make their plans, he looked around to see who else was going to be there.
"Why Riku my boy, I'm so glad to see you made it back," Maleficent said, making her way over to where he was standing; and also, though she couldn't see it, the man in the cloak who was still waiting in the Corridor. "Is there anything you wish to share, my boy?"
"Well, there is one thing," he said, finding the whole thing weirdly funny, almost like there was someone standing behind him laughing.
When he threw the salt and iron-powder bomb, it almost felt like he hadn't been the one to move at all. It was weird, but he didn't have much time to think about it before Maleficent started screaming. It was the worst sound he'd ever heard, filled with more pain than he'd heard from anyone else in his life. Finding himself almost stuck where he was, forced to watch as Maleficent staggered towards him, hands over her face like she was trying to hold herself together or something…
But then she put them down, glaring at him as she came closer…
"Like acid indeed," the cloaked man said, sounding really happy about the whole thing.
Finding himself back in the Corridor again, Riku crossed his arms in front of his chest and tried not to shudder. Parts of her face had been falling off…
"Riku," the man in the cloak said, steadying him with an arm on his left shoulder.
"Yeah, we really should get back," he said, un-crossing his arms and looking down the Corridor even though he couldn't really see the end of it…
~KH1~
The first thing Sarah noticed, even over the feel of Kuromaru dozing in "her" lap and the taste of one of her turkey sandwiches, was the scent of fresh rain on warm concrete. It almost seemed like one of those black-fire portals was starting to form inside her room, just to the right of the table she was eating at. Just as Riku emerged from the portal, however, Sarah felt a surge of raw power through the length and breadth of her room, and Riku yelped in surprise as something that looked roughly the size of a human of the size that she had once been ended up going through the door to her personal balcony.
"Wha- What was that?" Riku muttered, staring in surprise at the empty space where her balcony door had once stood.
"I've got an idea," she said, smirking as she headed for the broken remnants of what had once been a door.
Sure enough, False-Ansem was struggling back to what passed for his feet amid the remains of both the door, as well as the table that had been standing outside it.
"You owe me a new door," she informed him, grabbing one of the pieces of said former door and tossing it into the man's lap.
"What was that?" he demanded, confusion in every line of his shrouded form.
She smirked just that much wider, as False-Ansem rose back to the pile of robes that passed as his feet, tossing aside the shattered scrap of door that she'd tossed into his lap.
"Darkness passes through all barriers!"
"Yeah," she snarked back. "How'd that work out for you?"
Riku snickered from the empty doorway, making his way over to where the pair of them were standing.
"You know, I felt a bit weird when I came here, but I guess it was worse for you," Riku said, folding his arms as he smirked up at the cloaked form of False-Ansem.
"What did you do?" False-Ansem demanded, faceless hood turning to regard her with obvious curiosity.
"Wouldn't you like to know," she volleyed back, smirking as she turned to make her way back into her room.
"Seriously, what was that?" Riku asked, rubbing his folded arms as though he'd caught a sudden chill.
Or else, as though he'd felt the sudden shock of passing though someone's enhanced threshold with only what amounted to a tacit invitation.
"What is this?" False-Ansem demanded, handless sleeve-arms pressed against the invisible expanse of her reinforced threshold that stood sentinel even against the destruction of the physical door itself.
"Wow, that didn't happen to me," Riku said, as the pair of them made their way over to where False-Ansem was standing, handless sleeve-arms prodding at her threshold as though he was attempting to find some kind of a weakness; it didn't make him look any less like a mime, of course.
"It's something I had prepared for just this sort of occasion," she said, smirking at False-Ansem as he stood on the other side of her threshold. "Now, as I hope I made clear to you last time, you can either ask to be let in like a civilized person, or you can stay out there for the rest of the day."
The sound of running footsteps drew their attention, and Sarah saw False-Ansem teleport off of the balcony through another one of those portals that he and Riku used to get from point A to point B without having to cross most of the space between them out of the corner of "her" right eye. Her front door slammed open a few moments later, revealing Squall at the head of a group consisting of Donald, Goofy, Yuffie, and Aerith.
"What was that crashing-" Squall demanded, then clearly noticed the empty frame leading to her balcony where a door had once stood. "What happened?"
"Riku here apparently had a passenger when he came to visit me," she said, hopping up onto the bed she'd been using for so long. "So, if nothing else, it made a pretty good stress-test of that threshold we all helped work on."
Riku's head snapped towards her, a look of interest plain on his face, but Squall continued before he could get so much as a word in.
"A Heartless tried to get into your room?"
"Emphasis on tried, but yeah," she said, gesturing to the shattered remains of the door. "Hence what happened here," she shrugged. "I'm not so fussed about the table, though; never really had a use for the thing."
Squall narrowed his eyes. "This isn't a laughing matter, Sora," the brunet said, shifting his narrowed eyes to Riku, as the boy sitting next to her started snickering in response.
"Maybe we should go see Merlin about this," Aerith suggested, since Squall seemed more apt to try glaring a hole through Riku – who only smirked in response – than to try talking about what happened.
Or even what might, in response.
"That's probably best," she said, rising from her bed as Kuromaru hopped up onto "her" back.
Riku kept pace with her as Sarah inserted herself into the group that had come to investigate the disturbance in her room, but he seemed to be just as eager to antagonize Squall as he was to find out what was going on; what they were going to talk with Merlin about. Which, while more than a little annoying, wasn't such a problem as long as the pair of them kept things to a dull roar.
When their group had crossed the length of the Third District and were making their way over to the door that acted as yet another layer of defense for Merlin's little house, Sarah began to smell the familiar scent of fresh rain on warm concrete. She had roughly a handful of seconds to wonder just what in the hell was going on, before a veritable tide of Heartless erupted all around them.
Oh, what fresh hell is this? she grumbled inwardly, recalling the Keyblade as the courtyard all around them filled with Heartless. She had just enough time to get off a single spell – a Fire Lance that had been driven through the head of one of the large, round-bodied, vaguely Arabian looking Heartless – before one of the others, this one looking like a massively overfed version of those Knight-Heartless she'd caught glimpses of from time to time on those occasions when she and hers would leave Traverse Town on their continuing search for King Mickey, dive-tackled her and dragged her through one of those shadow-portals that Riku and False-Ansem both used.
Finding herself in what seemed to be some kind of abandoned laboratory, Sarah stood up, dusted herself off, and directed a singularly unimpressed expression at False-Ansem where he stood.
"You know, if you really wanted to find out what was going on back at the hotel, you could have just waited a bit," she said, folding "her" arms as she stared down the man who was starting to prove himself a distinct pain in her ass.
"Yeah," Riku put in, speaking for the first time since the pair of them had arrived in this abandoned laboratory. "This guy named Leon was going to take us to see Merlin," Riku continued, once it'd become clear that False-Ansem wasn't actually going to interrupt him. "He mentioned something called a threshold," Riku paused for a moment, an expression that seemed both confused and thoughtful overtaking his face, before he turned to look at her. "You mentioned that when you were talking, too."
"You know how to empower a threshold?" False-Ansem demanded, before Riku could say another word.
"Basically," she said, not particularly interested in giving the man any more information than was strictly necessary.
Hell, turnabout was more than fair play in this case, considering just how many secrets False-Ansem was keeping from Riku; and would have been keeping from her, if Sarah hadn't possessed out-of-context knowledge and a plan to milk it for all it was worth.
"Wait, am I the only one who didn't know what was going on?" Riku demanded, looking from her to False-Ansem and then back again.
"Seems that way," she said, just as False-Ansem himself said "Yes."
Riku's gaze snapped between the pair of them, not looking particularly happy. "So, since Leon was going to talk to Merlin about this, then that means he knows about it, too, right?"
"He was actually the one who gave me the base to build off of," she said, turning her attention back to Riku again. "I already knew what was possible, but knowing what was realistic helped quite a bit."
"Yes, I imagine it would," False-Ansem said, actually sounding rather impressed, if grudgingly so.
"Okay, so Leon was right, and Merlin really is the best person to help me find out what's actually going on around here," Riku said, folding his arms and leveling an unimpressed look at the pair of them.
"Seems that way," she said, smirking back at the silver-haired boy who had swiftly proven himself to be so fun to wind up. "Though, you know Leon's going to have words for us when we get back to Traverse Town, right?"
"Seems that way," Riku said, sounding like he was trying to mimic he semi-amused tone that Sarah herself had been speaking with.
The pair of them smirked at each other, while in the background False-Ansem nearly radiated annoyed disapproval; it was all fairly amusing, really.
~KH1~
When he and that kid who was still pretending to be Sora – really, the people here didn't seem to notice anything, since if they had, then they would have already seen just how different that kid was from Sora – both made it back to Traverse Town again, Leon did kind of yell at them for a bit, but he and the kid pretending to be Sora didn't pay much attention to him, anyway.
As he watched the kid talk to Merlin about the threshold thing it almost sounded like they'd built together, Riku tried to figure out just what it was that made that guy who had helped the both of them so much keep calling him a girl. He didn't act anything like Kairi, or even like Selphie. Sure, he was kind of a nerd when it came to talking about magic, but Merlin was obviously even more of a nerd, and no one would ever call him a girl.
Well, not unless they were really dumb.
When the kid pulled Merlin aside to talk, Riku followed the pair of them to what looked like some kind of training room. He wondered what the two of them were going to be doing, right up until the kid started asking about how to use fire-type magic. He watched as the kid started to practice using fireballs by shooting them at some kind of weird, floating cabinets, of all things.
When the kid did something weird with the Keyblade he was using, Riku narrowed his eyes as he tried to figure out just what the kid was planning to do.
~KH1~
As she gathered Mana to herself, the way that Merlin had advised her to, Sarah breathed deeply and focused on the mental image of Alex Mercer's Whipfist that she'd formed in order to use the attack she was developing to use against crowds of Heartless. Swarming Heartless being one of the more troublesome things that she and hers were going to run across on their search for His Royal Highness King Mickey.
The Whipfist had worked well enough on those crowds of Infected zombies roaming the wreckage of post-viral-outbreak New York, and if she could make something that approximated the Street Sweeper move, then she'd have a decent leg-up on any of the larger crowds of Heartless that were appearing all the more frequently as she and hers drew ever closer to what had originally been the end-game for Kingdom Hearts. Or, at least for the only game in the series that she'd played to completion, anyway.
Still, after what Merlin called good progress and Sarah herself called a promising start, she'd rejoined Squall and the rest of them as they made their way back out into the Third District.
"I don't know what else you want me to tell you," she said, in response to Squall's latest round of questions; which she was fairly sure was just vaguely rephrased from his first round of questions, with perhaps some extra suspicion thrown in for flavor.
"You can tell me the truth, Sora."
"That is the truth, Squall," she said, matching the man tone-for-tone as their group continued on their way back to the fortified hotel where they were all presently staying.
"That can't be all," Squall insisted, for about the third time that evening.
"He sent out Heartless to fetch us, we talked, and when he couldn't find the answers he was looking for, he tossed us back here," she said, going over a rough timeline of events for what felt like the seventh time since their conversation had taken this particular turn.
"That isn't how Heartless work, Sora," Squall said, sounding like he was personally disappointed in every way possible.
"Maybe that guy wasn't a Heartless," she said, despite the fact that she knew perfectly well that False-Ansem was most definitely a Heartless.
Squall clearly had his own preconceptions about what Heartless were and how they operated, and like most people he wasn't too keen on changing them; even in the face of reality.
Deciding that she wasn't going to get swept up in yet another pointless argument, Sarah closed with Riku and the pair of them hurried off to her hotel room once again. When the pair of them – plus Kuromaru as per usual – made their way back inside again, Sarah was pleased to note that the door that False-Ansem had found himself so unceremoniously shot-put through had been either repaired or replaced while she'd been away developing her latest magic-based attack. And attempting to placate Squall, at least to whatever extent that such a thing was even possible.
The scent of fresh rain on warm concrete alerted her to the fact that a certain someone was back, though whether it was for another round or something actually important remained to be seen.
"Hello again," she said, biting back a smirk at the sight of the obvious tension in False-Ansem's entire stance; apparently, unconscious body-language cues still carried over even when one no longer had a body.
Go figure.
"May I come in?" False-Ansem asked, sounding a bit more genuinely miffed than she'd ever heard from the man before.
Of course, back then he'd been both an NPC and pretty much on an upward spiral when it came to getting what he wanted, considering the fact that Riku had been the only one dealing with him directly. And that particular Riku had had his head lodged firmly up his ass.
"Just for tonight," she said, feeling the answering thrum of her personal threshold as she stepped slightly aside to allow False-Ansem to take his first actual steps into the room that Sarah had made her own for long enough to empower one hell of a threshold.
"Why is Riku allowed to move about so freely within your space, and yet I find myself having to having to wait on your pleasure for so much as a glimpse?" False-Ansem asked, in a tone that had a lot less to do with anything resembling genuine curiosity, and was more of a clear attempt to needle her.
"Riku has a standing invitation, yours is conditional," she clarified, firmly closing the door that lead out to the balcony even as she did so.
"Oh?" False-Ansem asked, as Riku smirked in the background. "And, what must I do, in order to gain such an invitation?"
She chuckled. "Well, you stop being a maniacal, power-mongering asshole, then we'll talk," she said, lowering "her" eyelids to half-mast as she made her way over to the bed so she could sit down while she spoke to the pair of them.
Or, at least saw them off for the night.
"I would hardly refer to myself by any of those terms," False-Ansem said, folding the empty sleeves that currently served as his arms; or, at least the closest analogues he had, considering his present state of being.
Sarah laughed outright, once False-Ansem had finished his latest protestations of innocence. "Okay, so you're a dishonest, maniacal, power-mongering asshole," she said, smirking unimpressedly at the man as Riku snickered in the background. "By the way, your invitation is almost up," she said, climbing back off the bed so that she could straighten it up for the night. "Which means that you can either leave my room under your own power for the first time since you got here, or you can have your ass shot-put through my door again." Finished with her current task, Sarah folded "her" arms and leaned lightly against the left bedpost at the head of her room's bed. "Of course, if you do end up willfully breaking my door, I'll be billing you for both the cost of repairs, as well as the inconvenience."
"Wow, you're actually going to make him pay you for that?" Riku asked, with an incredulous sounding laugh.
"If he breaks my door again, yes," she said, turning an amused expression on Riku where he stood. "Are you planning to stay overnight, or were you going to leave with him?" she asked, since Riku's distinct lack of anything resembling preparations to leave had become more than a little conspicuous at this point.
Riku actually laughed, in response. "Well, I don't think I'm ever going to be welcome back at Hollow Bastion again." Sarah raised an eyebrow, prompting a bit more of an explanation on Riku's part. "Well, you know those salt and iron things you had the Moogles make for you?"
"Yeah," she said, beginning to suspect what Riku was getting at, but wanting to hear him say it, all the same.
"Well, I used the one that I took, and it worked just like you said it would."
She huffed a sigh, leaning back against the wall just next to her room's bed. "You know, Riku, you should really avoid cutting ties with someone unless you absolutely have to," she said, crossing "her" legs at the ankles and resting "her" right arm on the edge of the headboard.
"What, you think I should go back?"
She was the one to laugh in response, that time. "No, I seriously doubt that a sincere apology would be enough to make up for what amounts to dousing someone with an incredibly potent acid." That, and I highly doubt your current ability to give that kind of sincere apology, whether you meant it or not, she didn't say, glancing back over at where False-Ansem was still standing, seemingly perfectly content to watch while she and Riku readied themselves for bed. "Why are you still here?" she asked, raising an eyebrow in the man's direction. "You know that when I start getting ready for bed, your invitation for tonight is going to expire, and your ass is getting launched straight out that door again."
"Yeah, and then he's going to make you pay for it," Riku said, chuckling softly.
"Speaking of sleep, it looks like you're going to be sleeping in my room for awhile," she said, turning her attention back to Riku, even as she saw False-Ansem departing out of the corner of "her" left eye. "Kuromaru, do you think you could find out where the staff keeps the extra bedding and cushions?" The Shadow nodded. "Good, would you mind fetching some of them for Riku to sleep on?" Another nod, she smiled. "Thanks."
Kuromaru gave her the closest that the Shadow could get to a thumbs-up, before turning to leave through another of those portals that False-Ansem and all the other Heartless seemed to use instinctively.
"Thanks," Riku said, making his way over so that he could lean against the wall next to her.
"No problem, Riku," she said, clapping his arm with "her" left. "Still, for future reference, it's usually best to think twice before you go throwing things at people. Besides the fact that it's rude, it's best to avoid making enemies when you can afford it."
Kuromaru returned quickly, and so she and Riku went about setting up a place for the latter to sleep for the night. And then, the pair of them got ready for bed at last. Once they were both finished, the both of them said their respective good nights, and settled down into their beds. Or the reasonable facsimile thereof.
The last thing Sarah heard was the soft click of Kuromaru turning out the lights.