CHAPTER 7: Bowser's Lament
Bowser, interestingly enough, did not actually want to destroy Mario and the Princess and Luigi, but instead wanted to heal them. "Without their shenanigans, my life is entirely without meaning," Bowser said, as he prepared his crack surgical team to reassemble the Mario brothers and their royal girlfriend.
"Koopa Troopa, I need 40ccs of adrenaline, stat!" Bowser said, as he prepared to make some incisions.
"Adrenaline? I thought you meant Kool-Aid!" said the Koopa.
"You fools! This is the wrong flavor!" said Bowser, but it was too late. Mario and Luigi and that other guy were all now dead and needed to be buried.
Bowser buried them all in a plot of land on his property and wept openly. No more would he kidnap the Princess on hot summer days when he was bored and in need of companionship. No more would Mario and Luigi beat the crap out of him after another rousing game of Go Fish with her royal highness. No more would the Detroit Lions win the Super Bowl, though it wasn't like they were winning any anyhow.
The Mushroom Kingdom threw itself into a panic, being comprised primarily of completely helpless mushroom men after all, before erupting into a violent, bloody civil war as several parties tried to fill the power vacuum that the death of Her Regal Majesty Princess Peach Toadstool and her royal consorts had created. It was brother against brother, mushroom against mushroom as factions were created, dissolved, massacred, executed and martyred.
Finally, at the end of the bloodbath, it was the mushroom man with the deepest ties to the royal family, the man simply known as Toad, that wrested control of the country for himself. As he sat occupying the royal throne, he pondered his course of action. His rule, barely a week old, was already one of some controversy. He was alleged to have murdered Toadsworth, the former princess's most trusted advisor, and many, especially those of the newly founded Socialist Workers' Party, wanted rule of the kingdom to be for the people and not to perpetuate authoritarian monarchy any further. Toad did not simply want to kill his political enemies; after seeing so many he cared for die in the conflict, he did not wish to inflict any more violence upon his people.
But still, his political woes were not simply going to go away. The royal coffers, already drained during the mourning process for the beloved late princess, were not going to nearly be enough to rebuild the fractured, devastated kingdom, and the pressure was already mounting for him to make things realized that he needed a diversion, something to take the minds off of the kingdom's self-inflicted wounds. Perhaps rekindling the old conflict between his and Bowser's considerable Koopa empire would be just what his kingdom needed.
He realized full well that Bowser was likely not responsible for the deaths of the princess and the plumberly duo. He had been around enough to realize that Bowser was all bluster, his cries of blood and thunder to be rained down upon the Mushroom Kingdom amounting to little more than thud and blunder. Still, he knew that there was some resentment harbored against the Koopa king among the various denizens of the Mushroom Kingdom. Many simply assumed that he had to have murdered them simply because he was the one last seen with that trio, that he would strike when the opportunity arose, no matter how cowardly and shameful such an act might be.
Quickly, then, Toad whipped the Mushroom Kingdom into a frenzy. He assembled a propaganda machine to insinuate that, indeed, Bowser had murdered the beloved princess and that he must be made to pay the ultimate price for such a grave misdeed. Toad's plan worked perfectly; the kingdom was soon up in arms, ready to take their war to Bowser's very keep, to enact revenge and to coincidentally fill the royal coffers with some blood money.
Meanwhile, in Bowser's empire, things were still in a state of disarray. The once formidable king had taken to a life of seclusion and despair. His already considerable frame had ballooned under the strain of alcoholism and despair, often staying bedridden as he ate little but wines imported from the Mushroom Kingdom and ate colossal cakes. No matter how much he drank or ate, he could not fill the gnawing black pit of hopeless guilt that filled his every waking moment.
As Bowser was in absolutely no position to run his empire, many of his advisors had taken to running the kingdom for him. A ruthless, conniving bunch, they decided that filling their own pockets was preferable to actually running the kingdom, fleecing Bowser's own treasury and erecting harsh, brutal taxes on the land's peasantry under Bowser's name. A seething resentment against Bowser was thus forming amongst his own people, who believed him to have gone mad with power at the death of their stated enemy, the Princess of the Mushroom Kingdom, and was out of touch with the needs and wants of his people.
Thus, when the Royal Army, under the command of Toad, rode into Bowser's empire, they were, oddly, hailed as liberators and were welcomed, putting up only small pockets of resistance here and there. Toad was inwardly thrilled—his plan was working far better than he had hoped—but still kept up an outward pretense that the battle of the keep itself would be the most treacherous and bloody the mushroom men had ever fought in their lives.
Toad did not realize just how easy taking the keep would be, however. As the Royal Army inched ever closer to Bowser's keep, some of the denizens of the keep themselves, knowing of the advisors' scheming and their indisposed, drug-addled king, staged a sudden revolt, lynching the advisors before putting their heads out on pikes in the front of the castle.
This did not stop Toad from executing the next portion of his plan, however. All those that were in the keep at the time the Royal Army stormed it were captured and many summarily executed without trial for their connection to Bowser. As for Bowser himself, he was discovered laying in his bed, half-conscious, a bottle of wine in one hand and a fistful of angel food in the other. So anesthetized with alcohol that he barely knew what was going on, Bowser was rolled out of his room and soon placed before the Royal Court of the Mushroom Kingdom.
A sham of a trial proceeded hence. Though Bowser was clearly unfit to stand for trial, he was nonetheless charged with crime after crime, everything from emotional distress to murder of the first degree. Once the charges were settled, Bowser had been forced to give up his entire empire to Toad and the Mushroom Kingdom, and was to be publicly executed at dawn for his "crimes."
The execution day. An old-fashioned execution was planned for Bowser; an axe blow to the neck so that his severed head would be paraded around the Mushroom Kingdom in the following days. A record number were in attendance, primarily consisting of the vengeful, bloodthirsty mushroom men, but with many of the citizens of Bowser's former empire, goombas and koopas primarily, filling the plaza where the execution was to take place.
Bowser was weeping openly. He knew, in that small portion of his mind that hadn't yet suffered from the ravages of his all-consuming alcoholism, that all of this was a ruse, simply a way for the Mushroom Kingdom to overcome their grief and sorrow over their beloved monarch perishing at his unskilled hands, but he no longer cared. Without the princess, without the Mario brothers, life was no longer worth living. He simply hoped that there was an afterlife, and that he could meet them all there.
Finally, the moment of truth. Bowser's head was placed on the chopping block. As a last rites were said for the soon-to-be-deceased, Bowser simply closed his eyes, and hoped it would all be over quickly.
The axe was lifted. The crowd hushed in anticipation.
Suddenly, a spaceship crashed in the plaza, and out popped Mario, Luigi, and the Princess.
"Hey everybody! We're-a back from our-a vacation! What's-a going on?" Mario said, bearing a tan and a Hawaiian shirt.
Before anyone could respond, a meteor crashed into the plaza, destroying the entire Kingdom and throwing the planet into another ice age.
"Mama mia, not again!" said Mario before he was vaporized.
TO BE CONTINUED