1.The Beginning
Dante rolled over in his sleep and snorted into his pillow. Suddenly, he sat up, looked blearily around for a moment, then sighed and fell back into the covers, fast asleep.
Two hours laterDante's contented snores were interrupted by a brief cough. Then a lot of coughs. Finally, he woke up hacking. "Damn. Must be time to get up."
Dante waved the offending piece of house insulation that had somehow gotten into his room away and proceeded to clamber out of bed and get dressed. He then decided that it was time for breakfast, which would probably consist of pizza, coke, and a bowl of popcorn. Such a healthy eater.
As Dante stumbled down the hall, he passed Trish, and unwisely screamed when he saw her face, which due to the early hours had not been tended to yet.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! Shit woman! You scared the crap out of me!" This less-than-tactful remark earned him a hearty smack across the face. Dante refrained from further comment, and continued on to the kitchen. Once there, he found Link. Now, you must understand, Dante was not quite awake, or he wouldn't have made that remark to Trish, and he would have noticed that Link was an intruder in his Castle.
"Salutations, fellow hero. You look like you just came out the wrong end of a bar fight," said Link.
Dante's response was automatic. "If you think I look bad, you should see the other guy."
"Good man. Coffee?"
"Thanks. This'll help me wake up," Dante said, accepting the elixir of life. "Well, see you later." Dante exited the kitchen, sipping at his mug of coffee. He eventually remembered the way to a large sitting room, and made his way to the largest, most comfortable seat around. His chair. The place where he could sit and be sublimely happy with a magazine and a drink. But not this morning, as Squall was occupying his seat reading a book entitled, Of Men and Women. "Hey dude, out," Dante ordered, pointing to the floor.
Squall calmly marked his place, closed his book, and gave Dante the once over. Coming to a conclusion, he inquired politely, "Who's going to make me?"
"Mr. Fist-In-Yer-Face if you don't move. I'm warning you, I'm not the best morning person."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah?!"
"Yeah!"
"Yeah?!?"
"Yeah, now beat it, punk!"
"I'll flip you for it."
"…Fine, if that's what it takes to make you move." Dante fished around in his pocket for his double-headed coin, and, upon finding it, held out his hand to flip it. "I've got heads." As he moved to flip the coin, Squall grabbed his hand and flipped him over the Lay-Z-Boy. Dante's coffee splashed all over the front of his shirt, burning him, and his mug shattered in the fall. Understandably, this upset Dante. "The hell you think you're doing, man?!? Do you have any idea how much this mug cost me? Huh? Do you? Well, for your information, it cost me $25.99, butthead! What've you got to say to that?"
"I'd say you got ripped, buddy," Squall replied pleasantly.
"That's IT!" Dante yelled as he grabbed Squall's foot and slung him out of the recliner into a fragile vase that still had the price tag on it. It read $350.00 (apparently, someone else got ripped off as well). Dante, believing the matter to be settled, sighed as he leaned all the way back in the recliner with his eyes closed, fully prepared to drop off for his morning nap. When he heard rapid footsteps, however, his eyes snapped open, only to see a marble vase stand coming at his head.
The impact and ensuing scream could be heard clearly in the kitchen, causing Link to jump, which made him drop both his newspaper and his doughnut on the floor. A rat – er, Blade – instantly grabbed the defenseless pastry and skittered up the wall into the rafters. Frowning, Link rose from the breakfast table and followed the source of the yells, eventually finding Dante with Squall in a headlock and Squall beating on Dante's head with a brick torn from the wall.
"Hmm… Hey Cloud, what's happening here?" Link asked of the pointy-haired one, who was currently hiding behind a couch.
"Well, it seems that when Squall chose a reading spot, he chose Dante's favorite chair, and when Dante came to claim his seat, Squall flipped him for it – literally. Dante retaliated by throwing Squall into an expensive vase, which, I must say, shattered quite well, and-"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. Who's Dante?"
"The guy in the red trenchcoat, and the proprietor of this Castle, apparently. Anyway, after Dante threw Squall, he lay down and closed his eyes. His nap was not to be, however, as Squall never lets anything end in a bad way for him. The noise that probably drew you in here was that of a marble vase stand colliding with Dante's head. Hence the fight."
"Thank you, Cloud," Link said. Seeing that the fight was destroying the room, he decided to put a stop to it. However, he was stumped as to exactly how he was going to go about it. First, he tried throwing random objects into the fight, such as books, small tables, and even a TV. They just got thrown back. Then he had a stroke of genius and started shooting Ice Arrows at the fighters in an effort to freeze them into blocks of (surprise!) ice. It took a while, but several minutes and half a quiver later, Squall, Dante, and the overturned armchair were frozen in one big ice cube. "There!" Link crowed.
"Finally," Cloud said with exaggerated relief as he came out from behind the couch, "I was beginning to doubt your accuracy, Link."
While the two heroes debated on what to do with their new ice sculpture ("We could go to Alaska and enter it in an ice-sculpting contest for cash!"), Dante's half-asleep brain woke up fully, jump-started by the sub-zero temperatures. Only then did he realize that there were intruders in his Castle. With a mighty effort, he broke free from the ice, inadvertently freeing Squall as well. "What in the flying, blue-blazing hell are you people doing in MY Castle?!?" he roared, "This is my place, not yours! Get out! Get out now!"
"Screw that, idiot. I, for one, am here to stay," Cid stated as he passed through the room on his way to the bathroom.
"Yeah. Show me yo' deed to da island, and I'll consider buyin' some of it off ya ta live in," Barret said, "Until den, we all got jus' as much right ta live here as you do."
"But… but… I enslaved the previous owner to obtain this island! You can't just waltz in here and claim a part for yourself!"
"Technically, Dante old chap, we can," Red XIII said smoothly, "Like our good friend Barret just said, if you don't have a deed, you don't have any right to make us leave, and, in the very likely event that we decide to live here, you can't make us pay rent either."
"Well, damn. That just sucks. What if my opinion was that you are all stupid asshole squatters and that I don't give a shit about any non-existent deeds?" Dante asked.
"Then we would all just have to find a way to 'convince' you otherwise," Tidus answered.
"The hell! Just how many of you are there? This is turning into a freakin' zoo here!" Dante yelled.
"OOOOOOOgaboogalooga!! Mecha le HEEEEEEEE liaga, eekyum," Zidane stated.
"Okay, now it is a freakin' zoo."
"Oh, don't mind him," Squall said coolly, "He has his own little language. Unless he's speaking in English or looking suspicious, don't give him a second thought. You might want to check your pockets, by the way. He's a crafty little bastard."
Dante checked his pockets, holsters, and secret sewn-in wallets. He found that one of his pistols was missing, and lost no time in grabbing Zidane and shaking him roughly. "Give it up, you little monkey-tailed rat!" Zidane stubbornly refused to hand it over, and Dante took him by the ankles and smacked him against the wall. Zidane decided that it was not in his best interests to keep the gun any longer, and handed it over with bad grace and a curse in Zidanese.
"God, you people are just so… ah, hell with it. Stay if it suits you. I was getting bored anyway, living here all by myself with nobody intelligent to talk to." Trish stalked in and bashed Dante's head against the wall three times, much to Squall's delight. "OKAY OKAY!! Jeez, I meant to say that I've had no intelligent guys to talk to. Satisfied?" Dante amended, rubbing his head.
"For the moment. Invariably, you will screw up later and piss me off to no end. Then I will have to correct you once more," Trish replied.
"Sure, whatever… anyway, it's just you guys right? No other people coming to breathe my air are there?" Dante asked.
"Well actually," Fox started, "there is the small matter of our girlfriends needing a place to live as well…"
"Oh-ho-ho no. No girls," Dante said decisively, "Counting all of you, I'd say that there's at least six or seven you're talking about, probably more. There's just no way I'm going to let so many women into my sanctum. Nuh-uh. No way in hell." Just then, Trish walked in leading the girls to their bedrooms.
"I'm sure you'll just love it here. I haven't had anyone intelligent to talk to in ages. There's a kitchen, a den, a bathroom, and here we have…"
"Um, can I ask something?" Rinoa asked.
"Why, certainly, dear."
"Why are you saying 'a bathroom' instead of 'the bathroom'?"
"Well, this Castle is so big, there are tons of rooms. It's only logical that there would be more than one kitchen, bathroom, den, and so on."
"Oh, okay. Please, continue your tour."
"All right, over here we have…" Trish's voice trailed off in the distance. Dante stared after them.
"Will someone hand me a noose? Please? I just don't think I can take anymore of this..." Dante dithered weakly.
"Hey man, you can't give up!" exclaimed Cid, who was back from his little bathroom adventure, "Committing suicide now is like admitting that the girls won! Are you going to give up without a fight? And you call yourself a man."
"Yeah… yeah! You're right! I can't just give up and die! All right, the first action I'm going to take against the spreading of girly influence is to divide the Castle roughly into two halves. On one side the boys. On the other, the girls. Of course, some areas will be neutral, like bathrooms, the kitchen, and… and…" Dante started to plan.
"Don't worry Dante, we'll help too! Can't have the women getting the upper hand, you know," Link said.
"Just what I wanted to hear! With a team like ours, how can we lose? Okay, first, Zidane you go and…"