Wario was furious by the time he had finished his morning workout and had made his way to the White House kitchen to have breakfast.

Who does-a that Wii Fit Trainer think-a she is? I'm-a not-a fat!

He thought this as he angrily shoveled twelve whole eggs, two pounds of bacon, ten breakfast sausages and fifteen pancakes into his gaping maw; the kitchen staff stood nearby, their faces frozen in silent horror as they witnessed the Commander-in-Chief stuffing himself like an overstuffed Christmas goose that was ready to explode at any minute into a gooey spray of apple and onion stuffing all over an intensely hot oven that would be next to impossible to clean. Executive Chef Kirby was lying asleep in a pot during all of this. He was always sleeping, that is when he wasn't eating his own cooking or out raiding watermelon patches in the wee hours of the morning, occasionally eating a watermelon farmer or seven.

As Wario ate with fury of a disgruntled otaku angry over how that one anime he had spent most of the year watching had a crappy ending, random chunks of food pelted the inert cooks, causing them to silently wish that the president either would learn some table manners or would have elected to eat in one of the White House's dining rooms instead (Wario would have eaten in one of said dining rooms, but he was in too much of a hurry to do so. Either that or he felt like being a jerk and wanted to mess up the kitchen for them).

After he was done eating, Wario trotted back to his bedroom and swapped his yoga outfit for his signature hat, a navy blue suit, a red tie and a pair of olive hued clogs. He looked over at the alarm clock: 8:15. In less than ten minutes, he would be meeting with his personal secretary to discuss his schedule for the day and within the hour Shadow would have the Daily Brief waiting for him on his desk.

Wario groaned wearily. He was running late; he had wasted too much time wrestling with his demons earlier. By now, Henrietta and Shokora should have been fed and his perusal of the day's headlines should have been done with. It looked like he was going to be forced to skip his daily "personal reflection time", which consisted of him thoroughly prospecting his nostrils while reading a passage from the Dao De Jing and a chapter from Richard Nixon's memoirs, along with ten randomly generated hipster quotes and a copy of a random, angsty private message from a teenage girl complaining to her GF about her relationship woes (provided courtesy of the good folks at the National Security Agency, whose motto is 'Swiggity doo, we're watching you').

Not wanting to waste another minute and knowing that his pet hen and cat could get quite ornery when they were hungry, the fat man quickly toddled over to his dresser and snatched up his WarioPad, a device that was nothing more than a yellow Amazon Kindle with a plastic replica of Wario's nose and moustache glued above the screen. He powered on the device, downloaded the daily New York Times and stormed out of his bedroom, body slamming into several staffers as he made his way to the Tennis Court, where Henrietta made her dwelling three seasons out of four.

Dedede was not having a good morning. He had woken up late, scalded his tongue on his morning coffee and had eaten the huevos rancheros his wife Dadada had made for him so quickly that he had given himself indigestion. Then, what should have been a quick fifteen minute drive to the White House had turned into a miserable hour stuck in D.C's eternally gridlocked traffic. So it was safe to say that he was in a pretty bad mood by the time he had finally made it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But it was what he saw outside of the passenger window of his limousine that really made him angry.

There was a crowd of well over 1,000 people standing outside the gates of the White House's North Lawn. They were carrying signs and wearing T-Shirts bearing various slogans such as 'Impeach Wario', 'Wario? Hell No!', 'WariNo', 'Wario Blows' and 'Wario is a Homunculus" among other more colorful statements. Doubtlessly, these protestors were here because of Wario's announcement the day before, where he had declared his intentions to run for reelection. But then again, it was hard to say if that was the case, seeing as how protests had been held outside of the White House almost daily for the past year. Most of the time it was difficult to figure out what exactly the protestors were protesting about in the first place; Wario had a long list of blunders and scandals under his belt that made some of the more controversial presidents in history not look half as bad.

Dedede sighed as the limousine slowly rolled up the driveway towards the North Portico. If Ah was the president, he thought bitterly, none of this would be happening.

He cast a glance at the White House grounds, admiring the superb landscaping, and then looked up at the ever approaching mansion. This all could have been his three years earlier, if only circumstances had played out differently. He had been the Republican candidate in the last presidential election. He was faring well in the polls against his Democratic and Federalist challengers, mostly because the former had repeatedly shot himself in the foot by making several incredibly stupid remarks that even the most forced and mealy mouthed of apologies couldn't atone for and the latter was simply written off as an angry white male and an old fart who made some valid points, but likely had a snowball's chance in hell of actually getting elected because he was so old. For a while, it looked like victory was within Dedede's grasp and there was talk among some insiders who suggested that he could even win in a landslide just like Nixon and Reagan had done decades before (how can you go wrong when you've got Karl Rove doing your math for you?).

And then along came Wario.

Dedede laughed when he had learned Wario had become the Federalist Party's new presidential candidate. He was a hideous, 308 pound ignoramus with no political experience whatsoever, whose only claims to fame were being the former president and CEO of a bankrupt video game company and the spokesman for a body spray that smelled like steak. The Federalists would've have been better sticking with that old coot Kershaw; by making Wario their candidate, they were practically handing Dedede the election.

In the end, however, it was Wario who have the last laugh. Dedede had never counted on how Wario would be able to use his riches to rags story of how he had gone from being the head of WarioWare to a nearly impoverished itinerant worker to tug at the heartstrings of the voters. He had never figured Wario to be such a skilled and fiery orator who would spend the four short months of his campaign passionately railing against the alleged abuses and corruptions of the two-party system. And certainly he could never have predicted what would happen come Election Night.

In the days prior to the election, Dedede publically exuded confidence that he would be able to pull off a decisive victory; privately, he was not so confident he would be able to succeed. The polls had been close for weeks; sometimes Wario was shown with a several point advantage, while at other times it was Dedede who was ahead and in some polls, both men were neck and neck with each other. It was really anybody's guess who would emerge as the victor when the polls closed, but it still didn't stop the talking heads from putting their useless two cents in, though.

What happened next was something that no one had foreseen: Wario had won the popular vote, but both Wario and Dedede had exactly the same number of electoral votes. There always was talk during every presidential election about what would happen if there was a tie in the Electoral College, but very few political scientists, pundits or the media at large ever took such considerations very seriously. The possibility of this ever happening was considered by most to be about as likely as Taylor Swift committing to a relationship that lasted more than three months. And yet, here it was, staring at them all like that googly eyed stack of money in those Geico commercials from years back.

And thus began a period of electoral chaos which hadn't been seen since the turbulent election in 2000 when George W. Bush stole, uh I mean won, the vote. Per the guidelines laid out in the Twelfth Amendment, the election was thrown to Congress and the media went insane like a horde of crazed fangirls at a One Direction concert, milking the story for all it was worth. When the dust finally settled, the Federalist controlled House of Representatives voted for Wario to be President, while the mostly Republican controlled Senate cast its ballot for Dedede to serve as Vice President. Once again, the media had a field day with these results; political commentators and the late night comedians particularly took great pleasure in reminding the public how Wario and Dedede, both mortal enemies, would now be working together in the White House.

Dedede was less than pleased with this arrangement. Sure, in front of the cameras he put on a happy face and made it seem like he was taking the whole thing with a sense of good humor, but behind closed doors he fumed at the idea of having to work for the man who had taken away what should have rightfully been his. After all the time, money and effort; after pouring his heart and soul into his campaign, this is how it ended? It was almost as if he had been the victim of some cruel practical joke, like he had been strung along the whole time just so he could be humiliated in the worst possible fashion.

For a while, he tried to swallow his pride and accept the hand that fate had dealt him, allowing a small, naïve part of himself to believe that maybe he could make the best of the situation and that maybe him and Wario could put their differences aside and work together to create a better America. However, any false sense of diplomacy between him and Wario was gone within the first few days after the inauguration. The two men constantly butted heads over almost every issue, whether it be political or personal in nature. Dedede never bothered keeping track of how many times a week he and his rival would go at it or how many times Dadada and Dododo had seen him come home angry. It was just a part of everyday life for him, a part that he wished he could have done without (of course, Dedede could have just resigned after Wario's inauguration, but that would have things a lot more boring).

Dedede had known many people in his life that he could say he disliked, but Wario was the only person he could honestly say he genuinely hated. He was literally the embodiment of everything wrong with politics and the human race in general. He was a shameless hypocrite who spent so much time during his campaign griping about how the Democrats and the Republicans had stabbed Americans in the back by raising taxes so high, yet he was the one who had bullied Congress into hiking taxes even higher once he was in office. He was a coward who refused to take the fight to America's enemies abroad and sat idly by as they consolidated their strength and plotted to carry out attacks against innocent civilians. He was an ignoramus who actually petitioned the USDA to reclassify Jolly Rancher products as a fruit. He—

"Sir?" asked the limo driver, his voice piercing through the miasma of rage that was clouding the big penguin's mind. "I think we should get moving. I don't think it's a good idea to be sitting around here. I don't like the looks of that crowd…"

"Huh?"

With a shake of his head, Dedede snapped himself back into reality. "Ah, Ah'm sorreh," he said weakly with a sigh. "Ah was just thinkin' 'bout the past is all." Normally, he would have made jest of his absentmindedness with a laugh or a wave of the hand, but today he was in no mood to kid around.

With a disgusted groan, Dedede opened the passenger door and stepped out into the bright August sun. The morning air was full of the sounds of cicadas droning, as well as the continuous chanting of the crowd off in the distance: "Wario has got to go! Wario has got to go! Wario has got to go…"

The vice president slammed the car door behind him and nodded to the Secret Service agents standing nearby. Together, they walked under the awning of the North Portico and made their way to the front door.

"You've gotta hand it to Hellbat," said a dark haired agent, referring to Wario by his Secret Service codename. "He sure knows how to draw a crowd."

"Yeah, looks like there's gonna be a really big party today," said another sarcastically as he lit a cigarette.

As they approached the front door, Dedede looked over his shoulder at the protestors. So many angry people; how many of them had put their hope in Wario, thinking he was some kind of messiah who would lead America into a golden age, only to be let down in the end? Had they once bought into Wario's lies, only to realize in time that they had been sold a bill of goods?

Dedede shook his head and continued on to the front door.

A/N: When I was writing this chapter, I realized that I had unwittingly committed a continuity error earlier in this story, namely, that Dedede lived in the White House along with Wario. This is actually inaccurate since the vice president resides in a separate house on the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory. So in order to save face, let's just say Dedede and his family were forced to temporarily live in the White House following an incident in which an inebriated Wario and a college football team, who were celebrating a recent victory, crashed into Number One Observatory Circle and trashed the place. This chapter is set shortly after the reconstruction of said dwelling.

Also, as an interesting historical footnote, while it is extremely unlikely in today's political climate that two candidates could tie in the Electoral College (especially in a three-way race as mentioned earlier), there was an electoral tie that occurred back in the election of 1800. In that race, both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr had received exactly 73 electoral votes, which led to a long series of congressional squabbling before Jefferson was ultimately declared the winner (See? Fanfics do teach you valuable stuff).