Been delayed again because of midterms. Finally have a little breathing room so here's an update. I apologize in advance for the typos some of you have been finding. Usually I edit more carefully but my hectic schedule made it difficult. I appreciate all the comments I've been getting, especially the one to the effect "I love it even though nothing is happening." :P Still nothing happening in this installment but I hope you enjoy any way.
Peach pushed her hand as far into the back of the drawer as it would go, feeling the roughness of the wood against the tips of her fingers. Having nothing better to do, she had decided to pass the time by snooping around her bedroom. It wasn't exactly a proper princess activity but she was just so bored. Besides, she was in enemy territory so it was only right she should...well, no...not really. Even in the broadest sense, she couldn't bring herself to think of Bowser as her enemy. He'd never actually harmed her. Her kidnappings were, at worst, a nuisance and, sometimes, more often than she cared to admit, they were actually a relief. Sure, it wasn't very nice of Bowser to take her away without asking but that didn't justify her not being nice in response. Peach felt her face starting to get hot again, which seemed to happen far too frequently these days, like she was always doing something embarrassing. And now, even as she blushed, she knew it would not stop her. The nervous energy roiling in her stomach and sending tingling pulses out to the edges of her limbs would not allow it.
Her gloves lay carefully folded on the side of the bed to protect them from the dust and grime. Walking her bare fingers along the back of the drawer, Peach encountered a folded piece of cloth, soft once maybe but which now felt rough and worn. Pulling it out, she took it over to the window where the light was better, unfolding it carefully. It was a ruffle edged handkerchief of the kind a fine lady would carry, rather like, in fact, the one Peach had in her pocket at the very moment, crisp and white with delicate delicate hand embroidery. But, instead of being embroidered with flowers and stars, this one was embroidered with fireballs with a boarder of piranha plants around the edge and the initials C.K. Worked into the corners. In the bright light, Peach could see the material wasn't really so white after all, even after she had shaken the dust out. Clearly belonging to a prolific crier, it was yellowed with copious tear stains and, in addition, there were some dark streaks that looked almost like soot smudges. As she stood there, Peach felt a strange sadness inside her, wondering who C.K. was, why she had cried so much and how the kerchief had been left in this room.
But there were no answers and soon she continued her search, leaving the handkerchief folded beside her gloves. There was little to find. In the back of one of the bathroom cabinets, she discovered an old bottle of Eau de Brimstone, red cut glass, flashing like fire. The perfume had long since evaporated but a faint whiff of the sour smell lingered in the bottom of the bottle, causing Peach to wrinkle her nose in distaste. A further search revealed some crumbled tissue paper, the remains of a pack of gum, and a very crudely written note that read, "Don't bother to buy milk," none of it very interesting. Fuming with frustration, Peach flopped down on the bed and switched on the TV. But ten minutes of Koopa Bachelor were more than she could stand and soon she was making a second circuit of the room, more slowly and carefully, pulling out all the draws and switching on the closet light to be sure she didn't miss anything.
Thus it was that Peach noticed a small dark spot up near the top of the closet. She must have looked at it hundreds of time over the years and had always assumed it was a shadow. But now she wasn't so sure. Dragging the pink plush vanity stool into the closet, she clambered on top of it, first removing her shoes to improve balance and avoid damaging the plush. She reached as high as she could but her hand just fell short. Rising on tiptoe, she tried again, using her other hand to brace against the closet wall, straining higher and higher until her feet were arched like those of a ballet dancer, until her fingers just brushed the dark path and discovered it was, indeed, a void, rough at the edge as if someone had bashed a hole in the wall.
Now she needed a way to extend her reach still further and Peach certainly wasn't stupid enough to try stacking things on top of the already unstable stool to make it higher so she needed to make her arm longer. For a second, she almost wished Bowser had been cheap enough to equip her closet with wire hangers, then recoiled at the implied insult to herself. In the end, she settled for using, of all things, the toilet brush from the bathroom, which she had to hold by the prickly end since that end was too big to even fit into the hole. Back in the closet, Peach eased the handle of the toilet brush into the dark opening and felt it connect. There was definitely something in there. She poked harder but it refused to budge, must be wedged in there very tightly. More carefully now, she tried to work the handle down under whatever it was. It made her arm hurt to stretch it above her head like that but then she thought she felt whatever it was move, and a surge of elation knifed through her. Redoubling her efforts she levered the handle as hard as she could, taking her other hand off the wall to use the strength of both arms.
And then, somehow, her foot slipped. One of her arched, aching toes started to give way, wobbled too far to the side and the next thing Peach knew, her foot was out form under her and she'd fallen hard against the wall, probably bruising her shoulder in the process. Only luck had stopped her from going off backwards and cracking her skull on the floor of the closet. Her head reeling, the world spinning around her, Peach clutched the wall with both hands, even though there was nothing to hold on to. She didn't feel safe at all on top of this narrow stool but was too frightened to shift her feet even an inch to try and reach the floor. The fear possessed her whole body, making her arms and legs shake, her heart race, her breath come short, and she could do noting about it, was too paralyzed to move out of danger. Which was ridiculous seeing as she had adventured and fought beside Mario before. She couldn't explain it. Maybe because, in those situations, she had chosen the danger.
And then, almost as imperceptibly as the opening of a flower it gradually on Peach that these sensations were not entirely unpleasant. The racing fear made her light headed, giddy, in a way that seemed to strip weight from her body, that was almost euphoric. The panting breath and wild beating of her heart were exciting, energizing. Slipping limply down off the stool, she found her self laughing crazily as she flung herself onto the bed and rolled over and over, still laughing and feeling better than she had in ages. When she had finally stopped shaking, or when the shaking and laughter had subsided to a rippling quiver, Peach got back on her feet and returned to the closet. As soon as she put her foot on the stool, she felt her heart begin to pound again and almost stepped back down, then remembered how deliciously wonderful almost falling had been and eagerly redoubled her efforts.
This time, they bore fruit and a small dark object was dislodged from the compartment, flying through the air to hit the opposite wall of the closet, fortunately above Peach's head, and dropping to the floor. Gathering her skirts about her ankles to avoid tripping, Peach was down after it, her hands closing around the cool, textured surface. It was a book, bound in dark green leather, embossed and ornamented with gold leaf, though now much battered and faded, and dark with dust, the pages thin and yellowed. It had fallen face down but, turning it over, she found the title, Morte DeKoopa, was still just visible in raised Gothic letters.
A loud pounding rattled her door in the frame and startled Peach, who suddenly remembered she was kneeling on the floor of a closet with another's private property in her hands. "Princess Peach, your presence is required," came the almost nasal voice of the excited Koopa Troopa outside.
"Just a moment. I'll be right there." Scrambling to her feet, she slipped the book into the pocket of her dress, without thinking and ran to open the door.
"Lord Bowser requires your presence in the battle room," the guard declared, as importantly as he could, considering that his head came up to about Peach's waist. "Make haste, Mario approaches." Despite herself, Peach grimaced, loathing the Bowser/Mario battles with a hatred born of long nurturing. No one ever seemed to really get hurt but she was always so afraid someone might and, if they did, it would be her fault, if only indirectly, so she spent every combat breath held, fists clenched, lip gnawed, too nervous to watch and too paralyzed to look away. "Hurry, Princess." The koopa coughed and eyes her impatiently.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she cried, reminding herself sternly to mind her manners in spite of everything. But the second she stepped from the deep carpet of her bed room onto the sleek marble of the corridor outside, she let out a cry of shock at how cold and hard it was, something she had never really noticed before. To her extreme mortification, she discovered that she had left not only her gloves but her shoes as well back in the room, and, forgetting all else, turned immediately and dashed back to retrieve them, despite the guard's agitated protests.
The battle room was always located deep in the heart of Bowser's fortress, such that anyone approaching it from outside had to make their way through an obstacle course to reach it. There was a battle room in every castle and they were each a little bit different. Some had pits of lava, some collapsing floors, some trap doors for dropping spiked balls through, but the basic idea was always the same. Peach wondered idly, as she frequently did at times like this, how much time and money had been sunk in all the different battle rooms, not to mention the obstacle courses leading up to them. Had they been built by Bowser specifically for dueling with her rescuers, or by some ancient Koopa King for fulfill a mysterious, now long defunct, purpose? Certainly Bowser had added to them over the years. For example, she noted that in this particular battle room, a narrow parapet running between two high towers had recently been rebuilt with new, shiny black stone and fitted out with fire blasters mounted on the crenelated railing.
The blasters hadn't been turned on yet and it was easy for Peach to cross the narrow bridge to where Bowser was waiting, eagerly clutching a long metal rod with a point on the end and a backwards facing hook coming out of the side. "Good afternoon, Princess," he called jovially. "I hope you're feeling well."
"Fine, thank you," Peach replied, as politely as she could. Bowser was one person she most definitely did not want to know about the strange things happening to her recently.
"Excellent, excellent." Bowser made as if to reach for her, almost smacking her in the head with the rod in the process.
"Careful there." Peach ducked back out of the way and Bowser looked sheepish. "What is that thing?" she asked , smoothing her dress as she came over stand beside him.
Bowser's grin got even deeper. "It's my goad which I'm going to use to defeat Mario."
"Just don't hurt him, okay?"
"Of course not...as long as he remembers to stay away from the pointy end."
"Will he be here soon?" Peach wasn't exactly eager for Mario to have to go through all this, especially with the goad and the new fire blasters but, at the same time, standing around, making awkward conversation with Bowser wasn't exactly on her list of favorite activities either.
"He was spotted less than a mile from the gates and then he has to make it through the castle. Still, shouldn't be more than an hour at the most," said Bowser easily, shading his eyes as if searching for his rival in the distance, even though the platform they were on was located such that it was almost impossible to see the ground around the castle form here. Absently, Peach wonder if this was the castle with the backdoor. Mario had discover the backdoor many years ago but privately had told her that using it made him fell guilty. It felt so unsporting to pass ninety percent of the obstacles Bowser had worked so hard to set up. So he would only use it as a last resort, when he was out of coins, out of lives, and out of mushrooms. Peach sighed. She couldn't expect this to be one of those times, even assuming there was a backdoor in the first place, and she shouldn't be hoping for Mario to be in such dire straits anyway.
"Nice job fixing up this place," said Peach, as always at a loss for the polite thing to say to one's captor while waiting to be rescued.
Bowser grinned even wider. "Isn't it though?" he smirked. "Even if I do say so himself. Those flame blasters are the latest in the fire precision technology. Should be quite a challenge for Mario. I think he'll enjoy it." At those words, despite her best efforts, Peach felt anger boil up inside her, a kind of panicky resentment and this wasn't the first time. She frequently felt this way when Bowser, or Mario for that matter, talked about their battles. Why did she always feel so...so...threatened by the idea that they cared more about their rivalry with each other than about her? Did it really mean so much to her to have people fight, risk injury because of her?
At the question, Peach felt something inside her thrash like a hooked fish. A voice in her mind screamed shrilly, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!" drowning out the horror and self loathing of such a thought, at least for a moment. So intense was the realization that Peach reeled, almost sagging against Bowser and nearly impaling herself on the goad in the process. Bowser looked concerned or, at least, extremely surprised. Peach saw his mouth move but couldn't process the words, while she focused on bringing herself back under control, back to the cool, poised Princess she should be. No, never that. A true princess would never have such selfish, blood-thirsty thoughts. As she stood there, hunched over, breathing hard, as her mind swung giddily between elation and loathing, there came a loud crash from the doorway on the far side of the bridge and the frightened scream of a novice koopa troopa. "Prepare yourself, Lord Bowser. Mario has arrived."