7.A New Threat
(What a blatant, overused cliché....)
Fox's eyes snapped open. He saw that it was a brand new day. Early dawn light was just beginning to show through his window. He looked quickly at his calendar, which had one specific date out of the rest circled prominently with bright red permanent marker, and grinned hugely to himself as he thought of the coming day's prospects. He threw the covers off, leaped out of bed, and squirmed into his clothes as fast as he could manage without dislocating an arm or leg. Upon completing that task, he dashed to his bathroom and brushed his teeth with unusual vigor, drawing a small bit of blood in the process. Clearly, Fox was happier than he had any right to be, living in the Castle and all. When his teeth were brushed and polished to a mirror-quality shine, he combed out his face and head, and, carelessly tossing his comb somewhere behind him, walked briskly to his bedroom door. You could almost see it cringe slightly as he neared. He flung the door open and stood in the doorway.
"Hello, world! Damn, today's a beautiful day to be alive!" he called brightly to no one in particular. A Blade, caught up to its waist in one of Dante's patented 'rat' traps, which, unsurprisingly, were the only rat traps in the world large and powerful enough to hold an elephant. The poor, doomed Blade looked dumbfoudedly at Fox as he strutted off, whistling merrily to himself to the tune of 'Zipp-A-Dee-Doo-Da.' This was more evidence that Fox was unaccountably joyous this fine, fine morning. Meanwhile, the Blade bled to death, it's last thoughts being "What in the hell could he be so slap-happy about?" Then, unceremoniously, it died a horrible death, still trapped in the elepha--sorry, rat trap.
Fox came to a small set of steps in path. He was up the stairs, one, two, three! He rounded the next corner and marched quickly to a kitchen doorway that had promising smells emanating from it. Just as he was about to enter, a marionette (henceforth to be known as 'puppets') doing its chores innocently happened to bump him slightly. Fox happily turned and blew a leg off with his blaster. Even the blaster seemed unnervingly happy on this particular day, as it mercifully took the leg cleanly off, with no splinters or anything else hanging off the bloody stump. Satisfied that he had meted out sufficient punishment on the wretched puppet, Fox turned cheerily back to the kitchen, where Link was gaily scrambling eggs for everyone in the Castle, Garnet was staring at him weirdly, Dante was clapping heartily, and Fara was eating breakfast, looking as if she was ready for an excursion into the outside world. In fact, she was going shopping today. Leaving the puppet squirming on the floor, Fox entered the kitchen and seated himself at the breakfast table, greeting everyone in the room with a hearty "Wassup!"
"Yo!" Link called, "Want some eggs?"
"That would be great, just great, Link." Fox replied, "And how are you today, Dante?"
"I was good, but since I saw that merciless display of heartless cruelty, now I'm simply super."
"Happy to be of service. How about sliding me that pitcher of orange juice, please, my good man?"
"Sure thing, you sadistic woodland mammal you."
As Fox was pouring himself a tall, cool glass of orange goodness, a cry was heard in the hall outside.
"Oh, for God's sake, people! When you start something like this, make an effort to remember to finish it!" This indignant statement was followed by a gunshot, then Squall sauntered into the room. "I saw the blaster burns on that unfortunate puppet, Fox. The least you could have done was put it out of our misery."
"It bumped my arm, man! You expect me to just let that kind serious offence slide? What would that be telling all the other puppets in the Castle? It would be telling them it was okay to slam themselves against anyone at all! Especially me!" Fox said brightly in his defense. He drew Squall close to whisper in his ear, "Get a look at Fara, will you? Tell me what she's wearing."
Squall glanced at Fara briefly, then did a double-take. His face immediately split into a wide smile, and he himself broke into song, singing 'Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead' in a voice as clear and ringing as a bell.
Fox nodded satisfactorily. "I thought so."
Link slid Fox's eggs down the highly waxed countertop with no more than a "Heads up, Fox!" As the platter of cooked chicken embryos skidded by him at speeds exceeding 10mph, Fox reached out and snagged it lightly in one hand.
"Thanks, Link!" Fox shouted. As he was about to apply himself to his breakfast, he noticed that he had no utensils. Before he could even call for some from Link, a fork and knife skittered by at 15mph and thudded into the foot-thick balsa-wood block at the end of the bar. Sighing, Fox reached over and claimed them before some other parasitic 'friend' got to them first. As he started his meal, Fara pushed her plate back and stood up, brushing off her pants.
"Well, I'm off to the mall. See you all tomorrow, maybe the day after that." she said and walked out. Fox, and every other guy in the Castle, listened carefully to her fading footsteps, the jingling of jet keys, and the slamming of the garage door. They dared not celebrate until they were certain that her jet engine had roared from hearing range.
Then the Castle exploded with cheers and whistles as every Soldier in the Castle gathered hidden party supplies and headed for the single largest room in the entire Castle. When they arrived, Crash flipped on the lights, and they set their party favors down and began removing the white sheets from furniture, stereos, movie-theater sized TV screens, DVD players and stacks of painstakingly arranged DVDs, party lights, and disco balls. When all the sheets were carefully folded in one corner of the room, the tables were laid out and set, the TVs were dusted off and turned on ("She lives! SHE LIVES! AHAHAHAHAHAAA!" from Cid), and generally all was made ready for the coming bash in celebration of Fara's absence. When the last bowls of chips and dip were laid out, Dante assembled everyone in a line in front of the door.
Dante said, "Now, men, this is truly an event worth celebrating. Fara is gone, and as such we can make as many cruel jokes as we want, with her as the unwitting butt! I now pronounce this party......." A dramatic pause, ".....OPEN!"
The roar of assent was clearly audible throughout the whole Castle. The details of the blowout will not be listed. The only things worth mentioning about it was that a food fight of colossal proportions was begun when dastardly Cid threw a cup of punch at Fox and ducked under the table, where he caused no end of mischief launching edible missiles at anyone and everyone who came within range. He was eventually pulled kicking and screaming out from under the table and a whole full bowl of punch was broken over his head, showering him with fruity beverage and sharp glass. The other thing was Fox's apparently newly acquired break-dancing skills, which he had been perfecting under Dante's watchful eye. Just as soon as there was barely room enough for a mouse to lie down on the dance floor, Fox hustled in and proceeded to clear himself some space by randomly knocking people around until the dance floor was reluctantly cleared of everyone else but him. Zidane trained a giant spotlight on Fox from the rafters. Fox stood in the middle of the floor for a moment, then launched into such a reel of spinning, flipping, kicking, and tying himself in grotesque knots that even Dante, the self-proclaimed 'King of Cooldom,' was forced to admit that it was good. For everyone else watching, it was very good.
Hours later, the newly named Party Room was devoid of sentinent life. There were some puppets cleaning the volumous amounts of trash up and the scavenging Blade here and there, but they don't count, for obvious reasons. The halls outside, however, were another matter entirely. As per usual after a party of such a size, the boys were stumbling drunkenly through all the various known halls of Mallet Castle searching for all their respective rooms, supporting each other by lending a shoulder whenever the thought occurred to them to do so. Given their present state of mind, brought on by amounts of Vanilla Coke and chips that were so massive as to be life threatening, I'm sure all of you readers out there reading this (assuming of course, that you can indeed read English comprehensively) can see just how futile this search was. Most would probably end up dropping in the halls, snoring uproariously the millisecond their heads hit the ground. For poor Fox, this particular side effect of succumbing to the temptations of too much caffeine was doubled by being shaken, not stirred, with making a pretzel out of his body several times in a row. In short, he could barely walk, and he was bleary eyed.
The girls watched from afar, pitying the poor, luckless fools. Especially Fox.
"You know, it's a sad, sad sight. You think we should put them to bed?" Katt asked.
"Nah, let 'em rot. They brought it on themselves." *hic* Trish was still a bit tipsy. The girls too had had a small social gathering to celebrate Fara's departure, and had spent the time talking quietly among themselves, playing board games, reading whatever was handy, and watching the boys' antics in the Party Room via hidden cameras stationed throughout the room. The girls had passed two fancy glass bottles of Vanilla Coke and some snack crackers around, but that was it. Trish had delved deeply into both bottles, needless to say. If you were to confront her on the matter, she would deny everything, then bash your head in for even suspecting her of such a thing. The truth of the matter was, however, that she loved Vanilla Coke just as much as Dante did, and, also like Dante, she took every opportunity she could get to swill some down. But, whereas Dante could almost constantly be found with a can or two of caffeinated vanilla on his person, Trish only drank it when she found it in, say, the fridge, or out on the bar, after she had disinfected it.
"Don't the rest of you think that Fox's dancing was great? I never knew he had it in him." Malon said, slightly awed.
"Yeah, it was great. Where do you think he learned how to dance like that?" Tifa asked.
*bbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrAAAAAAAAAPPP!* "Man! Excuse me. As to Fox's mad dance skillz, Dante would be the man to point your finger at. Preferably the middle one." Trish answered.
"You're excused, Trish." poor innocent Rinoa said, "But what would be the significance of pointing your middle finger at someone?"
"I see Squall has yet to have The Talk with Rinoa." Aeris said, "If he had, she wouldn't have made that sickeningly innocent remark just now. But that's okay, Rinoa. We like you sickeningly innocent."
"What's the talk?"
"The Talk --in capital letters, dearie-- is something that cannot be explained by anyone but a greatly trusted friend. In your case, that would be Squall."
"Oh, of course. I trust Squall implicitly. With my life, even."
"Yes, yes, we know. If you want to know the reason one would extend their middle finger at any given person, you must have The Talk with Squall."
"I'll ask him about it when he's sober. Speaking of the opposite of being drunk off your ass, how do you think the boys manage to get falling-down drunk on Vanilla Coke?"
"Well, to help you understand, let's use the erstwhile Dante as an example. When he drinks enough Vanilla Coke, he gets hyperactive due to all the excess caffeine in his system. That's called a caffeine rush. When the caffeine rush wears off, a splitting headache is left as a testament to the powers of God. If we had left all the actual beer in Dante's beer cellar alone, Dante would probably be dead now."
"But he's a devil!"
"I realize that in it's entirety. You must also understand that the effects of alcohol are far worse than those of caffeine. In place of a splitting headache, for example, Dante would be unable to see or hear. Permanently. For all the other guys, the effects would be just as bad, if not worse. And that is why we spent and spend millions of dollars on Vanilla Cokes. We don't want the guys to die."
Rinoa blinked several times, taking all this new information in. When the point finally got across that alcohol could even kill Squall of all people, she gave a small, "Oh."
"Yep. Part of our plan is to wean them off alcohol entirely. Fara's trip to the mall included visiting a package store in order to purchase some real liquor. If all works out as it should, the guys will despise the real deal's taste and will renounce it forever. Then, then, and only then can we tell them that they've been drinking Vanilla Cokes the whole time. And watch your language, hon. You cannot legally cuss until you've had The Talk. Jeez, children today."
Meanwhile, in other unexplored parts of the Castle, dark plans were afoot. Unheard of monsters roamed these halls, and cockroaches the size of a skateboard scratched between the walls. An unhealthy place, to say the least. When boy and girl expansion of territory began to take place, these filthy places would be cleaned up considerably. But for now, a lone man made his way through the maze of branching corridors and empty rooms, thinking to himself that Hell's interior decorator must have taken a turn down insanity lane. When he had first begun to fight his way through the moon bases and even Hell itself, the environment had steadily become more and more disturbing. Where on the moon bases the walls had been made of stainless steel and the floor felt steady under your boots, in Hell the walls were of flesh and the floor felt as if it would shift from under you in a moment. But this place topped it all. The decor seemed to generally be like the inside of a castle, but as he had never actually been inside a castle, he couldn't say for sure. There were lavish carpets on the cut-stone floor, and prominent hangings and paintings lined the walls. All in all, it was highly disturbing. To say the least. And that wasn't counting the cockroaches. Huge, ugly, disgusting things. Deep down, this particular individual had a deep-rooted fear of cockroaches, probably stemming from some traumatic childhood experience. He was tempted to put a round in every one he saw, but his common sense told him that that would be a pointless exercise in idiocy. There were far too many too possibly kill them all, and everyone knows that for every one you kill, three more pop up in its place. So he didn't shoot any. Well alright, maybe just a couple.........hundred.
As he was stomping another semi-innocent roach out of existence, he heard muffled gruntings and other noises, and, for lack of anything better to do, he followed them to their source. After five minutes of searching, he came suddenly upon a doorway, and had to jump aside to avoid being seen. He cautiously poked his head around the corner, and beheld several brown, leathery-skinned monsters with white spikes poking out of their hides at random points on their grotesque bodies. They were grunting among themselves in what was a dialect no doubt perfectly understandable to members of that particular species, but was all gibberish to the space marine. Then he remembered the brand new all-purpose translator that he had had implanted in his helmet for a paltry $999.99. "Well, baby, now it's time to earn your keep." he thought as he flipped it on. The Imp's conversation was suddenly comprehensible, but with an accent not to be heard anywhere on Earth.
"So, has the Master said anything further about the takeover of this island?" Imp One asked.
"If he had, we would be storming the residents now, instead of sitting here rotting like Bill over there." Imp Two answered, motioning to a zombie standing in a corner all by himself, clutching a rifle to him like it was the only reason for his existence.
"I, for one, can wait to fight it out with those people living here. Have you seen the white-haired one in the big, red trenchcoat shoot? He can plug a beer can off a table from a hundred feet with his pistols!" Imp Three said fearfully.
"Ah, whadda you know? You're a coward. Ever since you saw that marine, you've been scared of anything that has anything to do with guns or chainsaws." Imp One sneered.
"You didn't see what he did to them though. He revved up his chainsaw, and, oh it's just to horrible to imagine....." Imp Three shuddered, ".......You would have had to have been there to understand my fear..."
"You're such a ninnyhammer. That marine hasn't been seen since the last time that one idiot demon left a portal to Hell open, and he found it. True, the destruction he caused cannot be measured be any mortal being, but he hasn't been heard of since. For all we know, some lucky demon may have finally taken him down in a hot pool of his own blood. If he has, I wish I could be there to drink it." Imp Two stated.
"We all know that that has about as much chance of happening as Osama bin Laden has of being alive right now." Imp Three said.
"Speaking of the latest incarnation of the King of Fools, I heard someone say that......"
Doom decided that it was time for action. If what he had just heard was to be believed, he was not actually in Hell, despite all appearances. And if he wasn't in Hell, he was on Earth. And that meant those Imps in there were trespassing on his turf. He pulled out his chainsaw and cranked it up. Those new key-started chainsaws were really something.
Upon the first noise that the chainsaw made, all three Imps and Bill the zombie turned to see Doom standing in the doorway, framed ominously by a flickering torch just across the hall. Imp Three shrieked shrilly and frantically searched for another exit from the room-turned-deathtrap. There were none. When Doom got a good look at Imp Three, he snickered nastily.
"Oh, I remember you. You're the one that got away that one time in Hell. How've you been doing with one arm and one eye, Stumpy?" Doom grated. He would have snarled, but his throat was too dry. He hadn't seen clean water for days.
Stumpy whimpered miserably. Pity would have coursed through Doom, but, after seeing what demons such as these did to prisoners taken alive, he was inured to that particular human weakness. Bill raised his rifle to his shoulder to fire, but Doom was much faster than some depilated formerly human corpse and dashed across the room, chainsaw revved to the max and poised for action. What followed need not be examined too greatly. Suffice to say that none escaped from the room.
After it was over, Doom stood there, breathing heavily and admiring the new red color scheme on the walls that he had caused. He then left the room, satisfied that he had ridded the world of a few more scumbags.
Fox lay on the hallside bench, eyes screwed shut and an arm over his face. All he could think about at the moment was how good a couple of Aleve gelcaps would be right now. With water. Cold water, with cold ice cubes in it. And an ice pack wouldn't go unappreciated, either. A big ice pack. And a soft bed. That would be a good thing to have now, if he could stand to get up and look for his room. Yeah, that was it. He needed two Aleve gelcaps, a tall, cold glass of water with large cold ice cubes in it, a big ice pack, and a nice, fluffy bed. But, seeing as all the other guys had dropped him off here and left him, not only did he have no idea where he was, but also the odds of someone coming around and helping him to his room were pretty slim. Just as he was about to drift off into merciful slumber, footsteps sounded nearby. He took his arm from over his eyes and squinted up to a pink-furred face looking kindly at him. It must be Katt, he told himself. She would help him. He just knew she would. She had to, he thought desperately.
"Come on, pretzel boy. Time for bed." Katt said as she pulled him off the bench and stood him up. He almost fell down again. "Damn, boy, how much did you drink? You should watch it in the future." Katt tried again, succeeding this time. She threw one arm over her shoulder and started walking off. Fox had two options:
A-He could follow her and possibly make it to his room before he conked out, or
B-He could choose not to follow her and fall out on the floor, knocking himself out in the process, and suffering the indignity of having a girl carry him to his room.
Needless to say, he went with option A. (Hehe....that rhymed...) On their way to Fox's room (at least that's what Fox thought), they ran across Dante in the hall. Literally, they walked on him as they passed. He didn't even grunt, just snorted like an African game animal and rolled over, scratching his gut. Next was Auron, who was walking brightly down the hall.
"Morning, you two. Having a good day?" he asked cheerfully.
As Katt said something witty in reply (read--author couldn't be arsed to think of something for her to say), Fox thought to himself, "Damn him. He drank just as much as the rest of us, and look at him now. Bright and cheery as lark on a sunny day. Being a ghost has its advantages though, I guess...."
They did not see anyone else for the rest of their trip. When Katt did finally open a door and lead Fox inside, he didn't bother to see whose door it was. Instead he gave a muffled cry of delight and stumbled the last few steps to the bed, throwing himself on it and falling asleep as soon as his head hit the oaken headboard. In the millisecond before he left the conscious realm, he thought, "But my bed doesn't have a headboard......" Then he was snoring.
Katt, after worriedly checking her headboard and then Fox for damage, decided to see just how far out of it he really was. She filled a five-gallon bucket with ice-cold water and dashed it over his head. Fox did nothing more than smile contentedly in his sleep and roll over. Katt smiled semi-evilly, and left Fox there to his rest. But not before she locked her door behind her from the outside.
Doom was having one bitch of a day. Of course, most of his days were bitches, but this one stood out from the rest. It had started well enough, what with his finding the long lost Stumpy and finishing what he had started with him months ago. Then it had all went straight down the turd flusher. A short while after finishing his slaughter of Stumpy and his friends, he had encountered another enemy group. This one had been moderately larger than Stumpy's. After taking care of that group, he almost immediately came upon another group large enough to fill up an auditorium. Then the formerly good day had become a cast-iron, maliciously malignant crapper of a day for Doom. It seemed that finally, he would be brought down. But if he was going to go, he didn't plan on leaving very many demons behind to tell the awful tale. It makes no sense to die with full bandoliers, after all. And Doom was a solid rock of good sense. His chaingun rattled out rounds at the speedy clip of 500 rounds per minute. Which says wonders about the mutilation he was effecting on his foes, which were cut down in the stream of hot bullets, one by one. When it clicked empty, Doom smoothly threw the smoking chaingun aside and brought his shotgun to bear, throwing up a veritable wall of lead with each buckshot-packed shell. A lucky Imp gashed his arm with a forward claw-sweep, but did not live long enough to even draw back its arm for another blow. Doom gritted his teeth in an effort to shut out the pain lancing through his arm, and kept on fighting.
Then Dante, Squall, and Auron appeared in the room on the far side. One look at the packed mass of monsters across the room, punctuated by repeated shotgun blasts, was all it took for all three to realize that someone was in deep shit. Not bothering to waste time by thinking at all, the three warriors ran headlong into the rear of the monster horde, weapons drawn. Who was the first to die in that charge, who was the last? (Homeric reference, for all you Iliad and Odyssey readers out there.) The first was a zombie in the very back of the crowd named Clinton, trying mindlessly to get at Doom. Auron cut him in half with a sweeping backhand swipe. The last was a Demon whose thick skull was cleaved cleanly in two by an overhead chop from Squall. That's not to say that Dante didn't help any. Swords are for killing, after all, are they not?
After the fracas was finished, the four victors stood there, panting hard. Doom kept his shotgun trained on the other three, wary of deception. Dante looked quizzically at him a moment, then suddenly his attitude could restrain itself no longer.
"Yeah, baby!" Dante yelled out while twirling his pistols in his hands, tossing and flipping them all over the place before he finally holstered them neatly somewhere under his trenchcoat. "We OWNED their asses, boys! Of course, if it hadn't been for me, you all would have lost miserably."
"Why, you bigheaded jackass. Me and Auron killed just as many each as you did, if not more." Squall said.
"Yeah, devil boy. You were by no means whatsoever the deciding factor in that fight. In fact, you were just an extra." Auron laughed.
"Extra? EXTRA?! You dare have the audacity to dub me an EXTRA? You're just jealous of my style and dashing good looks, as you two are as ugly as sin." Dante responded indignantly.
"Oh, really?" Squall asked. "Well, lets just see what the mirror says." Squall then dragged Dante to the one and only mirror that had not been shattered in the firefight. "Now, when the mirror sees me, it says, 'Gee, what a smart, good looking guy that is.' When it sees you, it says 'Whoa! What an ugly, stupid assed freak that is!'"
"Do you wanna settle this like real men do? Because I could take you in a fight any day of the week."
"Now now, boys, we don't want to give our guest the wrong impression about ourselves the first time he meets us. His grip on that shotgun has been tightening the whole time you babies have been squabbling. Now form up nice and even like right here in front of me." Auron commanded. Upon being ignored, he shouted, "You! Assholes! In front of me! Now!"
They formed up. Auron joined them in line, and they all gazed expectantly at Doom. After five minutes of complete silence, Doom shifted slightly, not taking his aim off the three other men. Dante's attention began to wander. He looked boredly about the room, then reached inside his trenchcoat for a Coke. He probably never knew how close he came to a new hole in his chest with that move. Doom watched longingly as Dante downed his Coke with evident relish, savoring every swallow, smacking his lips every two seconds. Doom was thirsty, had been for days, and seeing this display of boundless delight in liquid sustenance made him even thirstier. Dante, finishing his bottle of Coke, threw it away, and it crashed on the floor with a light tinkling sound due to the distance it had been thrown.
"I should have known better than to give you glass bottles, Dante. The temptation of breaking glass is just too much for you, isn't it?" Squall sighed.
"Yup." Dante replied simply as he drew forth another bottle from his trenchcoat, again coming a whisker's breadth from obtaining a new hole in his upper torso.
This time it was just too much for Doom to bear. Swallowing his pride, he gratingly asked, "Could you toss me some of that? I haven't encountered clean water for days."
Dante started, evidently surprised that Doom possessed the ability to speak. He got over it quickly, though. "Sure. I'm going to come over there and hand it to you now, so don't plug me with that gun, okay?"
Doom hesitated a moment, then slowly lowered his shotgun. Dante walked slowly over and handed the Coke to Doom, then backed slowly away. After watching Dante suspiciously for a minute (literally), Doom slung his shotgun over his shoulder on his gunstrap and looked about for something to open his new drink. When he saw that one Imp was still barely alive, he marched over and sat it up against the wall. "Stick out your lower jaw." Doom commanded. The Imp, fearing for its life, did so. Doom then hooked the aluminum lid of the bottle on one of the Imp's teeth and banged it smartly downward with his fist. This move had the double effect of opening Doom's Vanilla Coke and dislocating the Imp's lower jaw.
As the first tears of pain started to leak out of it's eyes, Doom drew his pistol and put it to the hapless creature's head. He said, "Thank you for your cooperation." And then he blew it back to Hell.
Dante stood slack-jawed for a moment, possibly two, then burst into wildly approving cheers, whistles, and applause. After gulping the whole bottle full of Coke down, it was Doom's turn to look at Dante. When Dante's obvious amusement at the dead Imp's fate failed to subside, he decided that if he was to get any sense out of these people, he was going to have to talk to someone with an IQ count over the freezing point. He turned to Auron. "He's easily amused, isn't he?" Doom asked.
"I'm afraid so. Anything from cutting an electric wire to opening a door right in front of a running person is highly amusing to him." Auron responded.
Doom looked at Dante again, and saw that he was standing over the Imp's body, pointing and laughing fit to bust. Doom shook his head and turned his attention back to more important matters. "Where's the nearest food depot?" He asked of Squall.
"Depot? You're a military type, aren't you? If you mean the nearest kitchen, it's a ways back behind us. We were exploring the Castle's unknown depths and ran across you. Good fighting by the way." Squall answered.
"The way you asked that question just now, ah...." Auron said.
"Doom."
"...Doom, the way you just asked that question just now, you sounded as if you knew beforehand that we would know where it was. How did you guess that we knew?"
"I've never known a warrior of any type to be ignorant for any length of time of where the nearest larder is."
By this time, the comic appeal of a dead and soon-to-be rotting body had deteriorated somewhat for Dante. Though it was still funny to remember exactly how it had died, the dead Imp no longer afforded any real laughs for him anymore. And so, predictably, his attention wandered again. He listened in on the conversation between Doom, Squall, and Auron for a short while, but quickly grew disinterested with that as well. His boredom level reached new unheard of heights before he remembered the single unbroken mirror on the wall. Upon finding that it was still there and in one piece, he strutted over and started posing like the world was going to end tomorrow, and he had to see himself one last time in the reflective surface of the mirror.
"Oh yeah, baby. Who's the man? Uh-huh, that's right, me. Get a load of these muscles. I know thousands of monsters who would sell their souls to the devil himself for these pecs. Of course, they've already sold their souls to Mundus, and I'M the devil himself, so they have nothing to pay me with, and I wouldn't sell my glorious muscles, anyway. So too bad, you stupid monsters. I'm so bad, yeah, and...."
All the while, Doom had been valiantly attempting to concentrate on Squall and Auron's voices over the droning of Dante's voice, but the all-reaching din was getting on his nerves. Finally, he said, "Excuse me just one moment, will you." It was not a question. Doom walked over to where Dante was flexing his arm muscles and stood there watching him, waiting for Dante to notice him. Now, if Doom had lived in the Castle as long as, say, Trish, he would have known that once Dante caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, only a smack upside the head could bring him out of his daze. When it finally became evident to Doom that Dante was even more single-minded than he had first believed, he commanded in his most polite voice, "Do you think that you could cease your endless babbling for a while? It is just beginning to get on my nerves. Just a little." It came out as a gruff threat to Dante.
"Well, if it's only just beginning to bother you, I've got a little more time to admire myself before you get well an truly pissed, and then we can fight and I will win, and then I will go back to admiring myself in the mirror again, without you there to interrupt." Dante stated matter-of-factly.
"Is that so?" Doom asked, reverting back to his usual growl. "Because I am of the opinion that you are not the most pleasant thing in the universe to set your eyes on. In short, so that you can understand, you are the ugliest, most obscene excuse for a person I have ever seen."
"Oh, I bet you say that to all of your competitors."
"Smart ass too, apparently. Well, I've dealt with 'people' worse than you will ever hope to be, so don't get on my bad side. Are we all straight here, kid?"
"Well, no actually. You see, there's this 'guy' here named Kuja, and he dresses like a... well frankly he dresses like a female stripper."
"I've seen 'men' dressed like... that... before. Killed 'em too. What makes this one so special?"
"This one takes cross-dressing to new, perverted levels. So no, technically we're not all straight here."
"Why does he even live here? He should have been killed long ago if he is still alive."
"Because he just won't die, man! We've killed him in so many different ways, there's way too many to count. But he just refuses to die. Every time, the next day he pops back up, trying to find another piece of slime like him, I guess."
"I see my services are required. Don't worry, if I can't kill him in thirty days, no one can. Also, you'll get half your money back if he still breathes at the end of thirty days."
"I'm paying for these services? Well, we've tried everything else...." Dante handed over $150.00.
Squall and Auron stared at the two business partners for the duration of their conversation. When Dante had drawn up the contract, and Doom had pocketed it, Squall and Auron looked at each other. They saw in the other's face the exact feeling of mutual confusion over how a threatening exchange of taunts between Doom and Dante had turned so rapidly into a new hope to rid the Castle of the cross-dressing son-of-a-bitch Kuja. What a world.
"Now, about that kitchen..." Doom said turning back to Squall.
Fox's eyes cracked open a millimeter, then snapped quickly shut again when the faintest bit of light found its way in. He groaned and shifted in the bed slightly. He was tucked in nice and tight. A little too tight to move very much at all in his present condition. He also found that all of his earlier wishes had come true. There was a bottle of Aleve and a tall, cool glass of water with ice in it on the nightstand by the bed. There was a large, extra cold ice pack on his head. And, most importantly, he was in a nice, big, fluffy bed. He swore to himself that he would never abuse his dancing talents and caffeine at the same time ever again. Sure it was cool at the time, but the aftereffects just weren't worth the rush. He sighed and relaxed in order to lose himself in the softness of the bed and pillows, which were nestled comfortably against the oaken headboard...
It took a few minutes, but it finally got through. Fox jerked awaked again, which did nothing to alleviate his headache, and turned around as far as he could to see an average sized nondescript oak headboard. That the headboard was there at all was of no consequence, but the fact that Fox positively knew that his bed had no such headboard told him the obvious. He wasn't in his room. However, he also knew that he had commissioned Cid to get one on his bed, and the hopeful thought that he was in his room after all pranced happily about in his muddled head. Just to be sure, Fox looked around the room. What he saw immediately shot his happy thought down and trampled it into the ground.
There was a half-open closet door to his right, with a bra hanging on the knob furthest away from him. That made him wince. Next, he saw a vanity table on the opposite wall from the bed he was in, with brushes, makeup, and other assorted beauty accessories. That made him cringe. Third, he noticed a teddy bear sitting on a desk, which was littered with papers, notes, and books. None of the guys, as far as he wanted to know, had a teddy bear that they publicly displayed for all to see. Sure, Dante probably had a childhood bear that he cuddled with every night, but Fox knew for a fact that Dante would never put it out in plain sight. It would look bad on his record if a cute little teddy bear were found somewhere in his room. Then Fox got a look at the bed itself. It had a blue blanket on it with small pink kittens parading around in rows. The pillowcases, sheets, and indeed the headboard that tipped him off in the first place had something regarding kittens on it somewhere.
Fox sat there quietly for ten minutes, digesting all of this new information. He deduced that, first of all, he was in a girl's room. Second, he had been duped into getting there for some reason. Third, judging by all the kittens on the bed, it was Katt's bedroom. Fourth, and last, he was in deep horseshit.
"I'm in deep horseshit. What am I going to do now?" Fox said wearily to himself. Usually, he would pay to be in Katt's room. But not now. Not in his current condition. He attempted to get up and stumble to the door, but only succeeded in tangling himself in the bedclothes until he couldn't move. When that got through to him, he began to struggle madly. Again, his intentions were to free himself, but instead he fell off the bed. From his undignified position on the floor, he could see the four cracks of light around the door. On the side with the doorknob, there were at least four places where the slim band of light was interrupted. After a minute or two (bear in mind, folks, Fox is still stoned here), Fox realized that those ominous interruptions of light could only be locks on the outside of the door.
"Man... Dad said there'd be days like this. Mom said not till you're married, but that's beside the point." He spied a file on the floor near the vanity table. "Bingo." Fox squirmed over and grabbed the file in his teeth and, due to the unnatural angle his arm was turned at because of the sheets he was tangled in, easily transferred it to his paw. After twenty minutes of vigorous sawing, his right leg was free, again because of sheets turning it in a direction any leg is really not meant to turn. But, as anyone who has had the pleasure of playing Super Smash Brothers: Melee knows, Fox is a very nimble creature. His agility is second only to the conforming powers of air.
Finally, he was completely free. It was only when he stood up and saw the mess on the floor that he realized that he had demolished Katt's bedcovers with a blunt nail file. He stared, disbelieving as to what he had done. He had committed the equivalent of hari-kari, suicide, and kamikaze all rolled into one overbearing burden of dismal fate. In the face of all this he could only think, 'Well, damn.'
Then one of the door locks rattled and opened. That was enough to bring Fox out of his daze and galvanize him into action. He looked quickly about the room for a good place to hide, and finally settled on the closet. As he was heading that way, another lock was unbolted. He then thought that the first place Katt would look would be the closet when she discovered the mangled linens on the floor. In midstride he changed course 265 degrees to the right and dove under the bed. The third lock clicked. Fox's heart was in his throat, mainly due to the fact that all the recent exertion had caused a sudden and unwelcome bout of nausea. The fourth and final lock disengaged, and the door swung silently open.
"Ah, I knew those locks that Zidane 'gave' me would come in handy one day. Now, to check on sleeping beauty... what the hell!?" came the pleasant ringing of Katt's rather pissed voice. "My custom-made sheets! My special issue pillowcases! My designer blanket! How did Fox... what's this? A nail file? He ripped them apart with a blunt nail file? Oh, the nerve of that audacious ne'er do well! But that's one of the reasons boys make such interesting playthings, I suppose. You have to constantly be alert to their inborn desire to destroy any and everything. Oh, well. He can't have gone far. He's in no shape to break locks after ripping my covers to dishrags. I'll just shut this..." the door slammed and latched from the inside.
Fox, who had managed to sneak out into the hall, barely avoided getting his tail slammed in the door. As he was about to flee for his life, a genuinely original and inspired idea came to him through God, who pitied him greatly at the moment. God had seen many a man get caught by Katt. Starting sometime in the third grade, she began stalking boys through the school halls. At that time, it was only to scare the living crap out of them, but the extra lunch money and the occasional yellow puddle under the boys afterwards was a nice bonus, too. Her reign of terror only worsened in high school, where the average guy was apt to be carrying at least a couple of greenbacks on him at a time. Then came college. Her heinous tricks and traps became legendary for their ingenuity and aptness for the occasion. Among these was a pressure switch, which could easily be disguised as an average floor or wall tile that released the chemical agent that is routinely (and evilly) placed into Icees and ice cream that causes brain freeze, Freon-12. Katt designed her trap to spray this raw element of torture into the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears of the luckless jackass who had performed the deed that drew her unwanted attention. This barrage of brain freeze extract (Ice-Age Freeze: Just one prescribed dose and you'll be twitching on the floor!) was usually enough to literally lock up all brain processes until a paramedic could be arsed to show up and revive the victim. There was no immediate pain, but her sources assured her that those patients taken to the hospital as a direct result of her cold-hearted shenanigans could not move at all without excruciating pain. Even when they were deemed fit to go back out into the outside world, they were groggy and slow-witted for weeks afterward, which demonstrates the medical proficiency of the doctors in that area.
Anyway, back to Fox and his daring idea. He could lock her in the room! He would have to be really quick, because once she realized that he wasn't in the bedroom, out she would come with a curse in her heart and a tranquilizer in her fist. That was a thought that Fox really didn't need at that particular moment. So he went to work, locking, bolting, and slamming the locks home on the doorframe. Not half a second after he had finished, the whole door shook violently. "Ha! See you later, Katt! I'm outta here!" Fox shouted behind him as he ran off down the hall. Before he had gone twenty feet, he ducked into a side room and puked all over a nearby rug, befouling the entire thing. It seemed he still wasn't in as good a shape as he had thought he was. After wiping his mouth, Fox resolutely stood up and proceeded at a much slower and measured pace down the hall, alert for any signs of pursuit. So alert was he, in fact, that he neglected to watch where he was going. By the time he thought he was clear, he was well and truly lost. Fox stopped, gazed blankly about him, and berated himself for being such a moron.
"God, how stupid can a person get? I've allowed myself to become lost in such a way yer average hood would never do. I have stupidly and foolishly neglected to watch where I was going due to the fact that I was too wrapped up in listening for Katt barreling down the hall behind me. Damn, I'm such a moron."
As Fox had been belittling himself, a steady background noise had become audible. It began as a faint thudding...
Thud, thud, thud, thud...
At the time, Fox had disregarded the sound as irrelevant and had continued to yell at himself. By the time he had finished with his self-loathing speech, the noise had increased to...
Thud, thump, thud, thump...
By now the noise had begun to get on Fox's nerves. Still, it was too far away to possibly affect him in any way at all, so he concentrated instead on finding out where in the hell he was.
THUMP THUMP THUD STOMP CRASH BOOM!
Now the cacophony of noise fully warranted Fox's attention. Whatever had the gall to go around making so much noise could not be very far away. Fox made a rough estimate of what he might expect to find as the source of this awful racket. Mundus? No, he's too thoroughly cowed to do something so bold with ten light-years of Dante. Phantom? Last Fox had heard, Phantom had buried himself in the center of the Earth. Griffon? Maybe. He was just a stupid bird, after all. Ganondorf? More likely than Griffon, but usually Link had Ganondorf under control by now if it was truly Ganon behind it all. While Fox had been plumbing the depths of his mind for a suitable baddie to pin the blame for this violation of the Noise Limit for Fools article, passed by Trish and Dante not too long ago, the said mind-numbing racket grew in its intensity.
BAM BOOM CRASH THUD SCREECH CRUNCH THOOM
The rhythmic pounding of the unholy chorus was beating inside Fox's head like a hippie beating a bongo. He could barely hear himself think over the din. He had to be close, because he could just discern the hiss of hydraulics between the explosions of deafening noise.
Some of the most complex and important things in life are discovered in the simplest way imaginable. In Fox's case, he had only to turn a corner to find the cause of his newly developed hearing disorder.
It was a spider. A frikkin' spider. That was Fox's first thought. Then the sheer size of the thing registered in his cloudy head. It was large enough to fill up a school gymnasium. To say the least. Then the fact that it was mostly mechanical fought its way through Fox's dysfunctional though processes. Fox stepped quickly back around the corner and shook his head. "Okay, lets get things straight here. I know I'm a little off today, and all this noise may be a symptom of one metric ton of Vanilla Cokes ingested in one hour. So I'm just going to step calmly back around that corner and see what there is to see." And he did.
It was still there, and it was still huge. It was made up of a large brain-textured mountain of... brains... and a metal exoskeleton with eight hydraulic legs and a seemingly glass dome over the brain. Implanted in the exoskeleton just below its grotesque "face" were two big miniguns, both pointed at him. He had been noticed. Fox stood there dumbly and could only utter one thing in the face of the oversized, overtly hostile web spinner.
For the second time that day, Fox said, "Oh. Damn."
(What a blatant, overused cliché....)
Fox's eyes snapped open. He saw that it was a brand new day. Early dawn light was just beginning to show through his window. He looked quickly at his calendar, which had one specific date out of the rest circled prominently with bright red permanent marker, and grinned hugely to himself as he thought of the coming day's prospects. He threw the covers off, leaped out of bed, and squirmed into his clothes as fast as he could manage without dislocating an arm or leg. Upon completing that task, he dashed to his bathroom and brushed his teeth with unusual vigor, drawing a small bit of blood in the process. Clearly, Fox was happier than he had any right to be, living in the Castle and all. When his teeth were brushed and polished to a mirror-quality shine, he combed out his face and head, and, carelessly tossing his comb somewhere behind him, walked briskly to his bedroom door. You could almost see it cringe slightly as he neared. He flung the door open and stood in the doorway.
"Hello, world! Damn, today's a beautiful day to be alive!" he called brightly to no one in particular. A Blade, caught up to its waist in one of Dante's patented 'rat' traps, which, unsurprisingly, were the only rat traps in the world large and powerful enough to hold an elephant. The poor, doomed Blade looked dumbfoudedly at Fox as he strutted off, whistling merrily to himself to the tune of 'Zipp-A-Dee-Doo-Da.' This was more evidence that Fox was unaccountably joyous this fine, fine morning. Meanwhile, the Blade bled to death, it's last thoughts being "What in the hell could he be so slap-happy about?" Then, unceremoniously, it died a horrible death, still trapped in the elepha--sorry, rat trap.
Fox came to a small set of steps in path. He was up the stairs, one, two, three! He rounded the next corner and marched quickly to a kitchen doorway that had promising smells emanating from it. Just as he was about to enter, a marionette (henceforth to be known as 'puppets') doing its chores innocently happened to bump him slightly. Fox happily turned and blew a leg off with his blaster. Even the blaster seemed unnervingly happy on this particular day, as it mercifully took the leg cleanly off, with no splinters or anything else hanging off the bloody stump. Satisfied that he had meted out sufficient punishment on the wretched puppet, Fox turned cheerily back to the kitchen, where Link was gaily scrambling eggs for everyone in the Castle, Garnet was staring at him weirdly, Dante was clapping heartily, and Fara was eating breakfast, looking as if she was ready for an excursion into the outside world. In fact, she was going shopping today. Leaving the puppet squirming on the floor, Fox entered the kitchen and seated himself at the breakfast table, greeting everyone in the room with a hearty "Wassup!"
"Yo!" Link called, "Want some eggs?"
"That would be great, just great, Link." Fox replied, "And how are you today, Dante?"
"I was good, but since I saw that merciless display of heartless cruelty, now I'm simply super."
"Happy to be of service. How about sliding me that pitcher of orange juice, please, my good man?"
"Sure thing, you sadistic woodland mammal you."
As Fox was pouring himself a tall, cool glass of orange goodness, a cry was heard in the hall outside.
"Oh, for God's sake, people! When you start something like this, make an effort to remember to finish it!" This indignant statement was followed by a gunshot, then Squall sauntered into the room. "I saw the blaster burns on that unfortunate puppet, Fox. The least you could have done was put it out of our misery."
"It bumped my arm, man! You expect me to just let that kind serious offence slide? What would that be telling all the other puppets in the Castle? It would be telling them it was okay to slam themselves against anyone at all! Especially me!" Fox said brightly in his defense. He drew Squall close to whisper in his ear, "Get a look at Fara, will you? Tell me what she's wearing."
Squall glanced at Fara briefly, then did a double-take. His face immediately split into a wide smile, and he himself broke into song, singing 'Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead' in a voice as clear and ringing as a bell.
Fox nodded satisfactorily. "I thought so."
Link slid Fox's eggs down the highly waxed countertop with no more than a "Heads up, Fox!" As the platter of cooked chicken embryos skidded by him at speeds exceeding 10mph, Fox reached out and snagged it lightly in one hand.
"Thanks, Link!" Fox shouted. As he was about to apply himself to his breakfast, he noticed that he had no utensils. Before he could even call for some from Link, a fork and knife skittered by at 15mph and thudded into the foot-thick balsa-wood block at the end of the bar. Sighing, Fox reached over and claimed them before some other parasitic 'friend' got to them first. As he started his meal, Fara pushed her plate back and stood up, brushing off her pants.
"Well, I'm off to the mall. See you all tomorrow, maybe the day after that." she said and walked out. Fox, and every other guy in the Castle, listened carefully to her fading footsteps, the jingling of jet keys, and the slamming of the garage door. They dared not celebrate until they were certain that her jet engine had roared from hearing range.
Then the Castle exploded with cheers and whistles as every Soldier in the Castle gathered hidden party supplies and headed for the single largest room in the entire Castle. When they arrived, Crash flipped on the lights, and they set their party favors down and began removing the white sheets from furniture, stereos, movie-theater sized TV screens, DVD players and stacks of painstakingly arranged DVDs, party lights, and disco balls. When all the sheets were carefully folded in one corner of the room, the tables were laid out and set, the TVs were dusted off and turned on ("She lives! SHE LIVES! AHAHAHAHAHAAA!" from Cid), and generally all was made ready for the coming bash in celebration of Fara's absence. When the last bowls of chips and dip were laid out, Dante assembled everyone in a line in front of the door.
Dante said, "Now, men, this is truly an event worth celebrating. Fara is gone, and as such we can make as many cruel jokes as we want, with her as the unwitting butt! I now pronounce this party......." A dramatic pause, ".....OPEN!"
The roar of assent was clearly audible throughout the whole Castle. The details of the blowout will not be listed. The only things worth mentioning about it was that a food fight of colossal proportions was begun when dastardly Cid threw a cup of punch at Fox and ducked under the table, where he caused no end of mischief launching edible missiles at anyone and everyone who came within range. He was eventually pulled kicking and screaming out from under the table and a whole full bowl of punch was broken over his head, showering him with fruity beverage and sharp glass. The other thing was Fox's apparently newly acquired break-dancing skills, which he had been perfecting under Dante's watchful eye. Just as soon as there was barely room enough for a mouse to lie down on the dance floor, Fox hustled in and proceeded to clear himself some space by randomly knocking people around until the dance floor was reluctantly cleared of everyone else but him. Zidane trained a giant spotlight on Fox from the rafters. Fox stood in the middle of the floor for a moment, then launched into such a reel of spinning, flipping, kicking, and tying himself in grotesque knots that even Dante, the self-proclaimed 'King of Cooldom,' was forced to admit that it was good. For everyone else watching, it was very good.
Hours later, the newly named Party Room was devoid of sentinent life. There were some puppets cleaning the volumous amounts of trash up and the scavenging Blade here and there, but they don't count, for obvious reasons. The halls outside, however, were another matter entirely. As per usual after a party of such a size, the boys were stumbling drunkenly through all the various known halls of Mallet Castle searching for all their respective rooms, supporting each other by lending a shoulder whenever the thought occurred to them to do so. Given their present state of mind, brought on by amounts of Vanilla Coke and chips that were so massive as to be life threatening, I'm sure all of you readers out there reading this (assuming of course, that you can indeed read English comprehensively) can see just how futile this search was. Most would probably end up dropping in the halls, snoring uproariously the millisecond their heads hit the ground. For poor Fox, this particular side effect of succumbing to the temptations of too much caffeine was doubled by being shaken, not stirred, with making a pretzel out of his body several times in a row. In short, he could barely walk, and he was bleary eyed.
The girls watched from afar, pitying the poor, luckless fools. Especially Fox.
"You know, it's a sad, sad sight. You think we should put them to bed?" Katt asked.
"Nah, let 'em rot. They brought it on themselves." *hic* Trish was still a bit tipsy. The girls too had had a small social gathering to celebrate Fara's departure, and had spent the time talking quietly among themselves, playing board games, reading whatever was handy, and watching the boys' antics in the Party Room via hidden cameras stationed throughout the room. The girls had passed two fancy glass bottles of Vanilla Coke and some snack crackers around, but that was it. Trish had delved deeply into both bottles, needless to say. If you were to confront her on the matter, she would deny everything, then bash your head in for even suspecting her of such a thing. The truth of the matter was, however, that she loved Vanilla Coke just as much as Dante did, and, also like Dante, she took every opportunity she could get to swill some down. But, whereas Dante could almost constantly be found with a can or two of caffeinated vanilla on his person, Trish only drank it when she found it in, say, the fridge, or out on the bar, after she had disinfected it.
"Don't the rest of you think that Fox's dancing was great? I never knew he had it in him." Malon said, slightly awed.
"Yeah, it was great. Where do you think he learned how to dance like that?" Tifa asked.
*bbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrAAAAAAAAAPPP!* "Man! Excuse me. As to Fox's mad dance skillz, Dante would be the man to point your finger at. Preferably the middle one." Trish answered.
"You're excused, Trish." poor innocent Rinoa said, "But what would be the significance of pointing your middle finger at someone?"
"I see Squall has yet to have The Talk with Rinoa." Aeris said, "If he had, she wouldn't have made that sickeningly innocent remark just now. But that's okay, Rinoa. We like you sickeningly innocent."
"What's the talk?"
"The Talk --in capital letters, dearie-- is something that cannot be explained by anyone but a greatly trusted friend. In your case, that would be Squall."
"Oh, of course. I trust Squall implicitly. With my life, even."
"Yes, yes, we know. If you want to know the reason one would extend their middle finger at any given person, you must have The Talk with Squall."
"I'll ask him about it when he's sober. Speaking of the opposite of being drunk off your ass, how do you think the boys manage to get falling-down drunk on Vanilla Coke?"
"Well, to help you understand, let's use the erstwhile Dante as an example. When he drinks enough Vanilla Coke, he gets hyperactive due to all the excess caffeine in his system. That's called a caffeine rush. When the caffeine rush wears off, a splitting headache is left as a testament to the powers of God. If we had left all the actual beer in Dante's beer cellar alone, Dante would probably be dead now."
"But he's a devil!"
"I realize that in it's entirety. You must also understand that the effects of alcohol are far worse than those of caffeine. In place of a splitting headache, for example, Dante would be unable to see or hear. Permanently. For all the other guys, the effects would be just as bad, if not worse. And that is why we spent and spend millions of dollars on Vanilla Cokes. We don't want the guys to die."
Rinoa blinked several times, taking all this new information in. When the point finally got across that alcohol could even kill Squall of all people, she gave a small, "Oh."
"Yep. Part of our plan is to wean them off alcohol entirely. Fara's trip to the mall included visiting a package store in order to purchase some real liquor. If all works out as it should, the guys will despise the real deal's taste and will renounce it forever. Then, then, and only then can we tell them that they've been drinking Vanilla Cokes the whole time. And watch your language, hon. You cannot legally cuss until you've had The Talk. Jeez, children today."
Meanwhile, in other unexplored parts of the Castle, dark plans were afoot. Unheard of monsters roamed these halls, and cockroaches the size of a skateboard scratched between the walls. An unhealthy place, to say the least. When boy and girl expansion of territory began to take place, these filthy places would be cleaned up considerably. But for now, a lone man made his way through the maze of branching corridors and empty rooms, thinking to himself that Hell's interior decorator must have taken a turn down insanity lane. When he had first begun to fight his way through the moon bases and even Hell itself, the environment had steadily become more and more disturbing. Where on the moon bases the walls had been made of stainless steel and the floor felt steady under your boots, in Hell the walls were of flesh and the floor felt as if it would shift from under you in a moment. But this place topped it all. The decor seemed to generally be like the inside of a castle, but as he had never actually been inside a castle, he couldn't say for sure. There were lavish carpets on the cut-stone floor, and prominent hangings and paintings lined the walls. All in all, it was highly disturbing. To say the least. And that wasn't counting the cockroaches. Huge, ugly, disgusting things. Deep down, this particular individual had a deep-rooted fear of cockroaches, probably stemming from some traumatic childhood experience. He was tempted to put a round in every one he saw, but his common sense told him that that would be a pointless exercise in idiocy. There were far too many too possibly kill them all, and everyone knows that for every one you kill, three more pop up in its place. So he didn't shoot any. Well alright, maybe just a couple.........hundred.
As he was stomping another semi-innocent roach out of existence, he heard muffled gruntings and other noises, and, for lack of anything better to do, he followed them to their source. After five minutes of searching, he came suddenly upon a doorway, and had to jump aside to avoid being seen. He cautiously poked his head around the corner, and beheld several brown, leathery-skinned monsters with white spikes poking out of their hides at random points on their grotesque bodies. They were grunting among themselves in what was a dialect no doubt perfectly understandable to members of that particular species, but was all gibberish to the space marine. Then he remembered the brand new all-purpose translator that he had had implanted in his helmet for a paltry $999.99. "Well, baby, now it's time to earn your keep." he thought as he flipped it on. The Imp's conversation was suddenly comprehensible, but with an accent not to be heard anywhere on Earth.
"So, has the Master said anything further about the takeover of this island?" Imp One asked.
"If he had, we would be storming the residents now, instead of sitting here rotting like Bill over there." Imp Two answered, motioning to a zombie standing in a corner all by himself, clutching a rifle to him like it was the only reason for his existence.
"I, for one, can wait to fight it out with those people living here. Have you seen the white-haired one in the big, red trenchcoat shoot? He can plug a beer can off a table from a hundred feet with his pistols!" Imp Three said fearfully.
"Ah, whadda you know? You're a coward. Ever since you saw that marine, you've been scared of anything that has anything to do with guns or chainsaws." Imp One sneered.
"You didn't see what he did to them though. He revved up his chainsaw, and, oh it's just to horrible to imagine....." Imp Three shuddered, ".......You would have had to have been there to understand my fear..."
"You're such a ninnyhammer. That marine hasn't been seen since the last time that one idiot demon left a portal to Hell open, and he found it. True, the destruction he caused cannot be measured be any mortal being, but he hasn't been heard of since. For all we know, some lucky demon may have finally taken him down in a hot pool of his own blood. If he has, I wish I could be there to drink it." Imp Two stated.
"We all know that that has about as much chance of happening as Osama bin Laden has of being alive right now." Imp Three said.
"Speaking of the latest incarnation of the King of Fools, I heard someone say that......"
Doom decided that it was time for action. If what he had just heard was to be believed, he was not actually in Hell, despite all appearances. And if he wasn't in Hell, he was on Earth. And that meant those Imps in there were trespassing on his turf. He pulled out his chainsaw and cranked it up. Those new key-started chainsaws were really something.
Upon the first noise that the chainsaw made, all three Imps and Bill the zombie turned to see Doom standing in the doorway, framed ominously by a flickering torch just across the hall. Imp Three shrieked shrilly and frantically searched for another exit from the room-turned-deathtrap. There were none. When Doom got a good look at Imp Three, he snickered nastily.
"Oh, I remember you. You're the one that got away that one time in Hell. How've you been doing with one arm and one eye, Stumpy?" Doom grated. He would have snarled, but his throat was too dry. He hadn't seen clean water for days.
Stumpy whimpered miserably. Pity would have coursed through Doom, but, after seeing what demons such as these did to prisoners taken alive, he was inured to that particular human weakness. Bill raised his rifle to his shoulder to fire, but Doom was much faster than some depilated formerly human corpse and dashed across the room, chainsaw revved to the max and poised for action. What followed need not be examined too greatly. Suffice to say that none escaped from the room.
After it was over, Doom stood there, breathing heavily and admiring the new red color scheme on the walls that he had caused. He then left the room, satisfied that he had ridded the world of a few more scumbags.
Fox lay on the hallside bench, eyes screwed shut and an arm over his face. All he could think about at the moment was how good a couple of Aleve gelcaps would be right now. With water. Cold water, with cold ice cubes in it. And an ice pack wouldn't go unappreciated, either. A big ice pack. And a soft bed. That would be a good thing to have now, if he could stand to get up and look for his room. Yeah, that was it. He needed two Aleve gelcaps, a tall, cold glass of water with large cold ice cubes in it, a big ice pack, and a nice, fluffy bed. But, seeing as all the other guys had dropped him off here and left him, not only did he have no idea where he was, but also the odds of someone coming around and helping him to his room were pretty slim. Just as he was about to drift off into merciful slumber, footsteps sounded nearby. He took his arm from over his eyes and squinted up to a pink-furred face looking kindly at him. It must be Katt, he told himself. She would help him. He just knew she would. She had to, he thought desperately.
"Come on, pretzel boy. Time for bed." Katt said as she pulled him off the bench and stood him up. He almost fell down again. "Damn, boy, how much did you drink? You should watch it in the future." Katt tried again, succeeding this time. She threw one arm over her shoulder and started walking off. Fox had two options:
A-He could follow her and possibly make it to his room before he conked out, or
B-He could choose not to follow her and fall out on the floor, knocking himself out in the process, and suffering the indignity of having a girl carry him to his room.
Needless to say, he went with option A. (Hehe....that rhymed...) On their way to Fox's room (at least that's what Fox thought), they ran across Dante in the hall. Literally, they walked on him as they passed. He didn't even grunt, just snorted like an African game animal and rolled over, scratching his gut. Next was Auron, who was walking brightly down the hall.
"Morning, you two. Having a good day?" he asked cheerfully.
As Katt said something witty in reply (read--author couldn't be arsed to think of something for her to say), Fox thought to himself, "Damn him. He drank just as much as the rest of us, and look at him now. Bright and cheery as lark on a sunny day. Being a ghost has its advantages though, I guess...."
They did not see anyone else for the rest of their trip. When Katt did finally open a door and lead Fox inside, he didn't bother to see whose door it was. Instead he gave a muffled cry of delight and stumbled the last few steps to the bed, throwing himself on it and falling asleep as soon as his head hit the oaken headboard. In the millisecond before he left the conscious realm, he thought, "But my bed doesn't have a headboard......" Then he was snoring.
Katt, after worriedly checking her headboard and then Fox for damage, decided to see just how far out of it he really was. She filled a five-gallon bucket with ice-cold water and dashed it over his head. Fox did nothing more than smile contentedly in his sleep and roll over. Katt smiled semi-evilly, and left Fox there to his rest. But not before she locked her door behind her from the outside.
Doom was having one bitch of a day. Of course, most of his days were bitches, but this one stood out from the rest. It had started well enough, what with his finding the long lost Stumpy and finishing what he had started with him months ago. Then it had all went straight down the turd flusher. A short while after finishing his slaughter of Stumpy and his friends, he had encountered another enemy group. This one had been moderately larger than Stumpy's. After taking care of that group, he almost immediately came upon another group large enough to fill up an auditorium. Then the formerly good day had become a cast-iron, maliciously malignant crapper of a day for Doom. It seemed that finally, he would be brought down. But if he was going to go, he didn't plan on leaving very many demons behind to tell the awful tale. It makes no sense to die with full bandoliers, after all. And Doom was a solid rock of good sense. His chaingun rattled out rounds at the speedy clip of 500 rounds per minute. Which says wonders about the mutilation he was effecting on his foes, which were cut down in the stream of hot bullets, one by one. When it clicked empty, Doom smoothly threw the smoking chaingun aside and brought his shotgun to bear, throwing up a veritable wall of lead with each buckshot-packed shell. A lucky Imp gashed his arm with a forward claw-sweep, but did not live long enough to even draw back its arm for another blow. Doom gritted his teeth in an effort to shut out the pain lancing through his arm, and kept on fighting.
Then Dante, Squall, and Auron appeared in the room on the far side. One look at the packed mass of monsters across the room, punctuated by repeated shotgun blasts, was all it took for all three to realize that someone was in deep shit. Not bothering to waste time by thinking at all, the three warriors ran headlong into the rear of the monster horde, weapons drawn. Who was the first to die in that charge, who was the last? (Homeric reference, for all you Iliad and Odyssey readers out there.) The first was a zombie in the very back of the crowd named Clinton, trying mindlessly to get at Doom. Auron cut him in half with a sweeping backhand swipe. The last was a Demon whose thick skull was cleaved cleanly in two by an overhead chop from Squall. That's not to say that Dante didn't help any. Swords are for killing, after all, are they not?
After the fracas was finished, the four victors stood there, panting hard. Doom kept his shotgun trained on the other three, wary of deception. Dante looked quizzically at him a moment, then suddenly his attitude could restrain itself no longer.
"Yeah, baby!" Dante yelled out while twirling his pistols in his hands, tossing and flipping them all over the place before he finally holstered them neatly somewhere under his trenchcoat. "We OWNED their asses, boys! Of course, if it hadn't been for me, you all would have lost miserably."
"Why, you bigheaded jackass. Me and Auron killed just as many each as you did, if not more." Squall said.
"Yeah, devil boy. You were by no means whatsoever the deciding factor in that fight. In fact, you were just an extra." Auron laughed.
"Extra? EXTRA?! You dare have the audacity to dub me an EXTRA? You're just jealous of my style and dashing good looks, as you two are as ugly as sin." Dante responded indignantly.
"Oh, really?" Squall asked. "Well, lets just see what the mirror says." Squall then dragged Dante to the one and only mirror that had not been shattered in the firefight. "Now, when the mirror sees me, it says, 'Gee, what a smart, good looking guy that is.' When it sees you, it says 'Whoa! What an ugly, stupid assed freak that is!'"
"Do you wanna settle this like real men do? Because I could take you in a fight any day of the week."
"Now now, boys, we don't want to give our guest the wrong impression about ourselves the first time he meets us. His grip on that shotgun has been tightening the whole time you babies have been squabbling. Now form up nice and even like right here in front of me." Auron commanded. Upon being ignored, he shouted, "You! Assholes! In front of me! Now!"
They formed up. Auron joined them in line, and they all gazed expectantly at Doom. After five minutes of complete silence, Doom shifted slightly, not taking his aim off the three other men. Dante's attention began to wander. He looked boredly about the room, then reached inside his trenchcoat for a Coke. He probably never knew how close he came to a new hole in his chest with that move. Doom watched longingly as Dante downed his Coke with evident relish, savoring every swallow, smacking his lips every two seconds. Doom was thirsty, had been for days, and seeing this display of boundless delight in liquid sustenance made him even thirstier. Dante, finishing his bottle of Coke, threw it away, and it crashed on the floor with a light tinkling sound due to the distance it had been thrown.
"I should have known better than to give you glass bottles, Dante. The temptation of breaking glass is just too much for you, isn't it?" Squall sighed.
"Yup." Dante replied simply as he drew forth another bottle from his trenchcoat, again coming a whisker's breadth from obtaining a new hole in his upper torso.
This time it was just too much for Doom to bear. Swallowing his pride, he gratingly asked, "Could you toss me some of that? I haven't encountered clean water for days."
Dante started, evidently surprised that Doom possessed the ability to speak. He got over it quickly, though. "Sure. I'm going to come over there and hand it to you now, so don't plug me with that gun, okay?"
Doom hesitated a moment, then slowly lowered his shotgun. Dante walked slowly over and handed the Coke to Doom, then backed slowly away. After watching Dante suspiciously for a minute (literally), Doom slung his shotgun over his shoulder on his gunstrap and looked about for something to open his new drink. When he saw that one Imp was still barely alive, he marched over and sat it up against the wall. "Stick out your lower jaw." Doom commanded. The Imp, fearing for its life, did so. Doom then hooked the aluminum lid of the bottle on one of the Imp's teeth and banged it smartly downward with his fist. This move had the double effect of opening Doom's Vanilla Coke and dislocating the Imp's lower jaw.
As the first tears of pain started to leak out of it's eyes, Doom drew his pistol and put it to the hapless creature's head. He said, "Thank you for your cooperation." And then he blew it back to Hell.
Dante stood slack-jawed for a moment, possibly two, then burst into wildly approving cheers, whistles, and applause. After gulping the whole bottle full of Coke down, it was Doom's turn to look at Dante. When Dante's obvious amusement at the dead Imp's fate failed to subside, he decided that if he was to get any sense out of these people, he was going to have to talk to someone with an IQ count over the freezing point. He turned to Auron. "He's easily amused, isn't he?" Doom asked.
"I'm afraid so. Anything from cutting an electric wire to opening a door right in front of a running person is highly amusing to him." Auron responded.
Doom looked at Dante again, and saw that he was standing over the Imp's body, pointing and laughing fit to bust. Doom shook his head and turned his attention back to more important matters. "Where's the nearest food depot?" He asked of Squall.
"Depot? You're a military type, aren't you? If you mean the nearest kitchen, it's a ways back behind us. We were exploring the Castle's unknown depths and ran across you. Good fighting by the way." Squall answered.
"The way you asked that question just now, ah...." Auron said.
"Doom."
"...Doom, the way you just asked that question just now, you sounded as if you knew beforehand that we would know where it was. How did you guess that we knew?"
"I've never known a warrior of any type to be ignorant for any length of time of where the nearest larder is."
By this time, the comic appeal of a dead and soon-to-be rotting body had deteriorated somewhat for Dante. Though it was still funny to remember exactly how it had died, the dead Imp no longer afforded any real laughs for him anymore. And so, predictably, his attention wandered again. He listened in on the conversation between Doom, Squall, and Auron for a short while, but quickly grew disinterested with that as well. His boredom level reached new unheard of heights before he remembered the single unbroken mirror on the wall. Upon finding that it was still there and in one piece, he strutted over and started posing like the world was going to end tomorrow, and he had to see himself one last time in the reflective surface of the mirror.
"Oh yeah, baby. Who's the man? Uh-huh, that's right, me. Get a load of these muscles. I know thousands of monsters who would sell their souls to the devil himself for these pecs. Of course, they've already sold their souls to Mundus, and I'M the devil himself, so they have nothing to pay me with, and I wouldn't sell my glorious muscles, anyway. So too bad, you stupid monsters. I'm so bad, yeah, and...."
All the while, Doom had been valiantly attempting to concentrate on Squall and Auron's voices over the droning of Dante's voice, but the all-reaching din was getting on his nerves. Finally, he said, "Excuse me just one moment, will you." It was not a question. Doom walked over to where Dante was flexing his arm muscles and stood there watching him, waiting for Dante to notice him. Now, if Doom had lived in the Castle as long as, say, Trish, he would have known that once Dante caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, only a smack upside the head could bring him out of his daze. When it finally became evident to Doom that Dante was even more single-minded than he had first believed, he commanded in his most polite voice, "Do you think that you could cease your endless babbling for a while? It is just beginning to get on my nerves. Just a little." It came out as a gruff threat to Dante.
"Well, if it's only just beginning to bother you, I've got a little more time to admire myself before you get well an truly pissed, and then we can fight and I will win, and then I will go back to admiring myself in the mirror again, without you there to interrupt." Dante stated matter-of-factly.
"Is that so?" Doom asked, reverting back to his usual growl. "Because I am of the opinion that you are not the most pleasant thing in the universe to set your eyes on. In short, so that you can understand, you are the ugliest, most obscene excuse for a person I have ever seen."
"Oh, I bet you say that to all of your competitors."
"Smart ass too, apparently. Well, I've dealt with 'people' worse than you will ever hope to be, so don't get on my bad side. Are we all straight here, kid?"
"Well, no actually. You see, there's this 'guy' here named Kuja, and he dresses like a... well frankly he dresses like a female stripper."
"I've seen 'men' dressed like... that... before. Killed 'em too. What makes this one so special?"
"This one takes cross-dressing to new, perverted levels. So no, technically we're not all straight here."
"Why does he even live here? He should have been killed long ago if he is still alive."
"Because he just won't die, man! We've killed him in so many different ways, there's way too many to count. But he just refuses to die. Every time, the next day he pops back up, trying to find another piece of slime like him, I guess."
"I see my services are required. Don't worry, if I can't kill him in thirty days, no one can. Also, you'll get half your money back if he still breathes at the end of thirty days."
"I'm paying for these services? Well, we've tried everything else...." Dante handed over $150.00.
Squall and Auron stared at the two business partners for the duration of their conversation. When Dante had drawn up the contract, and Doom had pocketed it, Squall and Auron looked at each other. They saw in the other's face the exact feeling of mutual confusion over how a threatening exchange of taunts between Doom and Dante had turned so rapidly into a new hope to rid the Castle of the cross-dressing son-of-a-bitch Kuja. What a world.
"Now, about that kitchen..." Doom said turning back to Squall.
Fox's eyes cracked open a millimeter, then snapped quickly shut again when the faintest bit of light found its way in. He groaned and shifted in the bed slightly. He was tucked in nice and tight. A little too tight to move very much at all in his present condition. He also found that all of his earlier wishes had come true. There was a bottle of Aleve and a tall, cool glass of water with ice in it on the nightstand by the bed. There was a large, extra cold ice pack on his head. And, most importantly, he was in a nice, big, fluffy bed. He swore to himself that he would never abuse his dancing talents and caffeine at the same time ever again. Sure it was cool at the time, but the aftereffects just weren't worth the rush. He sighed and relaxed in order to lose himself in the softness of the bed and pillows, which were nestled comfortably against the oaken headboard...
It took a few minutes, but it finally got through. Fox jerked awaked again, which did nothing to alleviate his headache, and turned around as far as he could to see an average sized nondescript oak headboard. That the headboard was there at all was of no consequence, but the fact that Fox positively knew that his bed had no such headboard told him the obvious. He wasn't in his room. However, he also knew that he had commissioned Cid to get one on his bed, and the hopeful thought that he was in his room after all pranced happily about in his muddled head. Just to be sure, Fox looked around the room. What he saw immediately shot his happy thought down and trampled it into the ground.
There was a half-open closet door to his right, with a bra hanging on the knob furthest away from him. That made him wince. Next, he saw a vanity table on the opposite wall from the bed he was in, with brushes, makeup, and other assorted beauty accessories. That made him cringe. Third, he noticed a teddy bear sitting on a desk, which was littered with papers, notes, and books. None of the guys, as far as he wanted to know, had a teddy bear that they publicly displayed for all to see. Sure, Dante probably had a childhood bear that he cuddled with every night, but Fox knew for a fact that Dante would never put it out in plain sight. It would look bad on his record if a cute little teddy bear were found somewhere in his room. Then Fox got a look at the bed itself. It had a blue blanket on it with small pink kittens parading around in rows. The pillowcases, sheets, and indeed the headboard that tipped him off in the first place had something regarding kittens on it somewhere.
Fox sat there quietly for ten minutes, digesting all of this new information. He deduced that, first of all, he was in a girl's room. Second, he had been duped into getting there for some reason. Third, judging by all the kittens on the bed, it was Katt's bedroom. Fourth, and last, he was in deep horseshit.
"I'm in deep horseshit. What am I going to do now?" Fox said wearily to himself. Usually, he would pay to be in Katt's room. But not now. Not in his current condition. He attempted to get up and stumble to the door, but only succeeded in tangling himself in the bedclothes until he couldn't move. When that got through to him, he began to struggle madly. Again, his intentions were to free himself, but instead he fell off the bed. From his undignified position on the floor, he could see the four cracks of light around the door. On the side with the doorknob, there were at least four places where the slim band of light was interrupted. After a minute or two (bear in mind, folks, Fox is still stoned here), Fox realized that those ominous interruptions of light could only be locks on the outside of the door.
"Man... Dad said there'd be days like this. Mom said not till you're married, but that's beside the point." He spied a file on the floor near the vanity table. "Bingo." Fox squirmed over and grabbed the file in his teeth and, due to the unnatural angle his arm was turned at because of the sheets he was tangled in, easily transferred it to his paw. After twenty minutes of vigorous sawing, his right leg was free, again because of sheets turning it in a direction any leg is really not meant to turn. But, as anyone who has had the pleasure of playing Super Smash Brothers: Melee knows, Fox is a very nimble creature. His agility is second only to the conforming powers of air.
Finally, he was completely free. It was only when he stood up and saw the mess on the floor that he realized that he had demolished Katt's bedcovers with a blunt nail file. He stared, disbelieving as to what he had done. He had committed the equivalent of hari-kari, suicide, and kamikaze all rolled into one overbearing burden of dismal fate. In the face of all this he could only think, 'Well, damn.'
Then one of the door locks rattled and opened. That was enough to bring Fox out of his daze and galvanize him into action. He looked quickly about the room for a good place to hide, and finally settled on the closet. As he was heading that way, another lock was unbolted. He then thought that the first place Katt would look would be the closet when she discovered the mangled linens on the floor. In midstride he changed course 265 degrees to the right and dove under the bed. The third lock clicked. Fox's heart was in his throat, mainly due to the fact that all the recent exertion had caused a sudden and unwelcome bout of nausea. The fourth and final lock disengaged, and the door swung silently open.
"Ah, I knew those locks that Zidane 'gave' me would come in handy one day. Now, to check on sleeping beauty... what the hell!?" came the pleasant ringing of Katt's rather pissed voice. "My custom-made sheets! My special issue pillowcases! My designer blanket! How did Fox... what's this? A nail file? He ripped them apart with a blunt nail file? Oh, the nerve of that audacious ne'er do well! But that's one of the reasons boys make such interesting playthings, I suppose. You have to constantly be alert to their inborn desire to destroy any and everything. Oh, well. He can't have gone far. He's in no shape to break locks after ripping my covers to dishrags. I'll just shut this..." the door slammed and latched from the inside.
Fox, who had managed to sneak out into the hall, barely avoided getting his tail slammed in the door. As he was about to flee for his life, a genuinely original and inspired idea came to him through God, who pitied him greatly at the moment. God had seen many a man get caught by Katt. Starting sometime in the third grade, she began stalking boys through the school halls. At that time, it was only to scare the living crap out of them, but the extra lunch money and the occasional yellow puddle under the boys afterwards was a nice bonus, too. Her reign of terror only worsened in high school, where the average guy was apt to be carrying at least a couple of greenbacks on him at a time. Then came college. Her heinous tricks and traps became legendary for their ingenuity and aptness for the occasion. Among these was a pressure switch, which could easily be disguised as an average floor or wall tile that released the chemical agent that is routinely (and evilly) placed into Icees and ice cream that causes brain freeze, Freon-12. Katt designed her trap to spray this raw element of torture into the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears of the luckless jackass who had performed the deed that drew her unwanted attention. This barrage of brain freeze extract (Ice-Age Freeze: Just one prescribed dose and you'll be twitching on the floor!) was usually enough to literally lock up all brain processes until a paramedic could be arsed to show up and revive the victim. There was no immediate pain, but her sources assured her that those patients taken to the hospital as a direct result of her cold-hearted shenanigans could not move at all without excruciating pain. Even when they were deemed fit to go back out into the outside world, they were groggy and slow-witted for weeks afterward, which demonstrates the medical proficiency of the doctors in that area.
Anyway, back to Fox and his daring idea. He could lock her in the room! He would have to be really quick, because once she realized that he wasn't in the bedroom, out she would come with a curse in her heart and a tranquilizer in her fist. That was a thought that Fox really didn't need at that particular moment. So he went to work, locking, bolting, and slamming the locks home on the doorframe. Not half a second after he had finished, the whole door shook violently. "Ha! See you later, Katt! I'm outta here!" Fox shouted behind him as he ran off down the hall. Before he had gone twenty feet, he ducked into a side room and puked all over a nearby rug, befouling the entire thing. It seemed he still wasn't in as good a shape as he had thought he was. After wiping his mouth, Fox resolutely stood up and proceeded at a much slower and measured pace down the hall, alert for any signs of pursuit. So alert was he, in fact, that he neglected to watch where he was going. By the time he thought he was clear, he was well and truly lost. Fox stopped, gazed blankly about him, and berated himself for being such a moron.
"God, how stupid can a person get? I've allowed myself to become lost in such a way yer average hood would never do. I have stupidly and foolishly neglected to watch where I was going due to the fact that I was too wrapped up in listening for Katt barreling down the hall behind me. Damn, I'm such a moron."
As Fox had been belittling himself, a steady background noise had become audible. It began as a faint thudding...
Thud, thud, thud, thud...
At the time, Fox had disregarded the sound as irrelevant and had continued to yell at himself. By the time he had finished with his self-loathing speech, the noise had increased to...
Thud, thump, thud, thump...
By now the noise had begun to get on Fox's nerves. Still, it was too far away to possibly affect him in any way at all, so he concentrated instead on finding out where in the hell he was.
THUMP THUMP THUD STOMP CRASH BOOM!
Now the cacophony of noise fully warranted Fox's attention. Whatever had the gall to go around making so much noise could not be very far away. Fox made a rough estimate of what he might expect to find as the source of this awful racket. Mundus? No, he's too thoroughly cowed to do something so bold with ten light-years of Dante. Phantom? Last Fox had heard, Phantom had buried himself in the center of the Earth. Griffon? Maybe. He was just a stupid bird, after all. Ganondorf? More likely than Griffon, but usually Link had Ganondorf under control by now if it was truly Ganon behind it all. While Fox had been plumbing the depths of his mind for a suitable baddie to pin the blame for this violation of the Noise Limit for Fools article, passed by Trish and Dante not too long ago, the said mind-numbing racket grew in its intensity.
BAM BOOM CRASH THUD SCREECH CRUNCH THOOM
The rhythmic pounding of the unholy chorus was beating inside Fox's head like a hippie beating a bongo. He could barely hear himself think over the din. He had to be close, because he could just discern the hiss of hydraulics between the explosions of deafening noise.
Some of the most complex and important things in life are discovered in the simplest way imaginable. In Fox's case, he had only to turn a corner to find the cause of his newly developed hearing disorder.
It was a spider. A frikkin' spider. That was Fox's first thought. Then the sheer size of the thing registered in his cloudy head. It was large enough to fill up a school gymnasium. To say the least. Then the fact that it was mostly mechanical fought its way through Fox's dysfunctional though processes. Fox stepped quickly back around the corner and shook his head. "Okay, lets get things straight here. I know I'm a little off today, and all this noise may be a symptom of one metric ton of Vanilla Cokes ingested in one hour. So I'm just going to step calmly back around that corner and see what there is to see." And he did.
It was still there, and it was still huge. It was made up of a large brain-textured mountain of... brains... and a metal exoskeleton with eight hydraulic legs and a seemingly glass dome over the brain. Implanted in the exoskeleton just below its grotesque "face" were two big miniguns, both pointed at him. He had been noticed. Fox stood there dumbly and could only utter one thing in the face of the oversized, overtly hostile web spinner.
For the second time that day, Fox said, "Oh. Damn."