Liminal Lacuna

by Cyndi

Bowser discovers he has a dangerous heart condition that leads to heart attacks, and Junior makes an unlikely friend. This is a story about fatherhood and coming of age. (Prequel to Vicessitude)

1. First

All of the OCs are mine. The Bowser x Peach is pretty one-sided, fair warning.

MAJOR TW: This may be difficult for anyone with medical trauma or trauma from witnessing medical emergencies. The descriptions of these events are graphic and possibly disturbing.

Other TWs: character death, sexual harassment, sexual language, body horror, violence, gore, ritualistic cannibalism (mentioned), hallucinations, delusions, unreality, near-drowning, kidnapping, bullying, vomiting, swearing, internalized ableism, alcohol, drug use (mentioned), and needles.

.o

"Dad!" Junior burst through the elevator doors of the medical ward. "Ready or not, here I come!"

It always stank with stinging chemicals down here. He jumped over a bandaged Goomba and stuck his head into several exam room doors before rounding the corner at the end of the hall. Here, the floor went from matte bricks to shiny tiles that squeaked under his feet.

Only really, really sick people went this far into the medical ward. Maybe, if he checked in here first, he could verify Bowser wasn't there and go back to searching the rest of the castle.

"Dad, I know you're not hiding here, but here I come!"

Squealing now, Junior sprinted through the giant doors, barreled into the hallway and skidded into an even smellier room.

Two MediKoopas whirled to face him with horrified expressions. One was taller and leaner than the other. Their name badges said Neil and Celine.

"Ha!" Junior barged further into the stinky room. "You! I saw you before!"

Neil was upstairs earlier, talking to everybody with big, weird words. Maybe he got in on the game!

Junior looked past Neil and stopped cold at the giant green shell propped against the wall by the massive bed.

At first, all he saw were the soles of his dad's huge feet. Labeled bags hung on a pole at the foot of the bed and the tubes at the bottom disappeared into a large vein on the underside of his tail.

"Dad?" Whispered Junior.

Bowser was sprawled on his back with tape holding his snout shut around a giant clear tube poking out of his mouth. It was hooked into two ridged blue tubes that led to a menacingly noisy box on a bedside shelf. Every time that machine whooshed, it made his chest rise and fall.

A brown U-shaped foam pillow pushed his neck forward while tilting his head back at a weird angle. The thick mattress had a depression in the middle to accommodate his curved spine— all adult Koopas had one— and a groove towards the foot gave his tail somewhere to go. There was a weird gray plastic bag taped over his cloacal vent. More foam propped his legs up like they had him sitting down while laying on his back. The position didn't look comfortable.

Bits of white showed through his eyelids because his watery eyes weren't fully closed. His face didn't look like his face. He wasn't frowning and all his features sagged.

The spiked bands he wore around his arms and neck were neatly piled on a velvet pillow near his shell.

He looked wrong in every possible way.

Junior's heart raced and his eyes stung as he studied the alien sight before him with growing dread.

Above the hissing tube machine was a flatscreen monitor displaying colorful moving lines and numbers. The white lines at the top had spikes, the blue lines in the middle showed weird plateaus and a purple one at the bottom drew lazy waves. A white number at the top shifted between fifty and fifty-four, sometimes jumping to sixty. Below it, a green number ninety-eight. There were more numbers, but it was too much to take in.

Still frozen in horror, Junior kept surveying the scene.

Two white suction cups and a bunch of staples were stuck to Bowser's chest. A long, thin tube hung out of a stitched, bloodstained hole in the plastron below the bandages taped over his staples. It ran into a squashed oval-shaped bulb with pink fluid collected in the bottom.

Everything emitted unsettling hisses, beeps or clicks. Sometimes, lights on the machinery flickered.

Junior pushed past Neil to get beside the bed.

"Dad!" He shouted. "Daddy!"

Bowser's eyes stayed shut. The tube in his mouth kept whooshing, pushing his chest unnaturally up and down.

"My little liege," whispered Neil, his voice a soft rasp. He had a bright red shell and knee high platform boots to match.

"Wake up, dad!" Junior hollered again.

Now the shorter one, Celine, approached. Her shell was blackish-green and she wore a gold heart-shaped locket on a choker length box chain.

"Little majesty," she said gently.

Junior ignored them both and yelled again, "DAD!"

When that didn't get a response, he whirled on the stunned MediKoopas and pointed an accusing finger at them. "You! You did this to him! Fix him! Now! Now! NOW!"

Their faces fell. They looked at each other.

Finally, Celine spoke. "We're trying, my little prince. Your daddy is very, very sick."

Tears welled in the corners of Junior's eyes. He balled up his tiny fists, frowning. "That's stupid! Dads don't get sick! You're stupid! You did this to him! Dad! DAD!"

.o

- Hours earlier… -

Waking up with a numb, tingly left arm wasn't unusual for Bowser. His head often ended up on that arm while he slept at night.

With a cavernous yawn, he stretched all five of his limbs at once and scooted off the bed. Phosphenes clouded his vision, which turned dark. He leaned over to let the head rush pass. It took longer than he remembered.

Thinking nothing of it, Bowser staggered into the bathroom. The annoying toothache he had all week reminded him of its presence. He scowled at his reflection in the mirror and opened his mouth to check his sharp teeth, but none looked awry, not even the back left tooth that seemed to cause his misery.

Damn. I'm gonna get this thing pulled if it doesn't stop.

Another wave of dizziness made him clutch the stone sink. He splashed water on his face and padded into the hallway. The kids were going to be causing trouble soon.

Distant noises came up the stairs and through the windows. Scratch that, they already were.

"Dad?" Junior poked his head out of his room.

Bowser stopped to look over his shoulder. "What's up?"

"It happened again," Junior pouted. "I cleaned myself up, but can't get the sheets off the bed."

"Heh, it's fine. I'll do it."

"You're not gonna laugh?"

"Nah." Bowser pushed the door open, and had to swallow a snicker when Junior rushed to shut it behind them.

Junior's blankets and pillows were strewn across the floor among his toys. There was no mistaking the wet top sheet or the smell of pee.

"Heh, you poor kid."

"You said you weren't gonna laugh!"

"I lied! It's kinda funny, but it sucks too. Here."

Bowser gripped onto the waterproof top sheet by the bottom corner and yanked it up, pulling the whole thing off in two quick tugs. The stain didn't go through to the second one underneath.

"I wet the bed as a kid, too, ain't nothing to be upset about." He rolled everything up to hide the stain and stuffed it down the laundry chute beside the door.

His left arm did not want to get proper feeling back into it. It wasn't numb, but it kept tingling like it was about to be. He flexed it a few times and wiggled his fingers.

Junior sniffed and patted his blankets. "These are dry."

"Put 'em back on, then." Bowser guided him through getting the bed redressed. "See? No big deal."

"Wait." Junior sized him up with his eyes, bushy little eyebrows rising. "You're a king and you peed the bed? Do you still do it?"

"Ha! No, you grow out of it." Bowser exhaled a giant puff of smoke into the center of the room, which covered up the urine with a kerosene scent. "And if you don't, so what? Bully anybody that laughs at you."

Finally, Junior's embarrassment dissipated. He jumped up and down, his tiny tail slapping the stone floor.

"Can we race Karts?"

"After breakfast." Bowser opened the bedroom door. "So get on down there, we'll go after everybody eats."

And by the sound of it, a few of the kids already got there.

"Stop hogging all the pancakes, Roy!" Wendy's shrill voice echoed up the staircase.

"Be faster next time!" Roy boomed back.

"Geez, dad, did you run?" Larry's voice cut over the rest.

Bowser paused at the foot of the stairs to catch the breath that kept running away from him. When the hell did stairs get so difficult to traverse?

He grinned, "Yeah, a marathon, and I won!"

Wendy twisted in her seat, the frilly bow atop her head flapping with her movements. "Daddy, don't throw the mail away this time, okay? I ordered new nail polish and it's supposed to come today."

"It's black," Roy muffled around his forkful of pancake.

She scowled, "It's Brimstone Gray, you jerk."

Larry snickered, finishing the last of his breakfast. He hadn't sprayed his hair yet, so it hung to the side like a blue waterfall.

All the cooking and cooked food smelled scrumptious, but Bowser's appetite didn't jump to life. He shoved into the kitchen to dish up some scrambled eggs, yet gave up after a few bites.

Since he didn't want to waste the food, he fobbed it off on Junior, who happily dug in.

Larry squinted as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "You okay?"

"Upset stomach," Bowser grumbled, dropping himself onto the seat at the head of the table. He rubbed his palm across his face. All he did this morning was get up, help Junior change his bed and walk down a staircase, and he felt as exhausted as he did after fighting Mario.

The ache in the left side of his jaw pinged again. He patted it, yawning.

"Maybe you're getting sick." Wendy dabbed her painted pink lips with her napkin.

"Or old," Roy smirked.

"Hey, low blow," Bowser grumbled.

Roy's sunglasses gleamed. "What? We all get older."

"Yeah, but you don't have to rub it in."

"I'm never getting old!" Junior said with his mouth full.

Larry walked off with his plate, his tail swishing behind. He came back to wipe up his crumbs. "Keep saying that, Junior, you're gonna wake up old enough to get married."

"EWW! You have to kiss on the mouth to be married!" Junior spat, waving his fork over his head like a weapon.

Roy, Wendy, Larry and Bowser cracked up at the same time. That officially ended breakfast.

"Iggy and Lemmy went to the movies," Larry said when he emerged from the kitchen.

"What's out?" Asked Bowser.

"Um, some kind of monster movie."

"Godzilla," Roy added. "I think it came from outside."

"What's he got that I don't?" Bowser raised a brow.

Larry shrugged. "He's radioactive."

With that, he took his leave up the stairs.

Junior dumped his silverware on his plate and climbed off his chair.

Wendy preened in her compact mirror. "I'm gonna have to start wearing wigs if my hair doesn't grow."

Roy huffed, dismissing himself with his plate. "Morton! Get the drones! Let's race 'em in the…" his voice trailed off into the clamor of kitchen noises.

Bowser pushed his unused fork aside. "Doesn't matter, you're the prettiest Koopa girl in the Darklands."

"You say that because you're my daddy and you're supposed to," she lamented.

"I say it because it's true." He leaned over to kiss the top of her head, careful not to disturb the bow she always taped there to hide her lack of hair. "And what do you do to people who don't agree that you're gorgeous?"

"Gouge their eyes out," Wendy snapped her compact shut.

Bowser grinned devilishly. "Atta girl."

"Can I be excused?"

"You're a princess, excuse yourself."

She laughed, springing away from the table without picking up after herself. Her little high heels clomped up the stairs.

Faint piano notes emanated from Ludwig's room. Bowser braved the stairs, stopping at the top to catch his breath and listen to the scales his eldest practiced. First, a harmonic minor, then Dorian, and finally, C major.

Knowing the wrath not knocking incurred, Bowser rapped on the door with his claws. The piano scales never faltered. He peeked in carefully and saw his eldest leaned over with his head resting against the top of the piano while he played it.

His face was turned away, and he left his hearing aids on an unused piece of paper next to his sheet music. They were clear, cylindrical ear molds with domed tips.

Well, that explained why he didn't notice the knocking.

As a baby, Ludwig gravitated to the piano every time Bowser noodled around on it. He threw tantrums whenever he heard a note out of tune— a revelation that he, too, had perfect pitch.

Bowser picked him up, sat him in his lap and played, and somehow Ludwig learned his way around the keyboard. He could play simple songs at just one and a half years old. Hell, he knew more songs than spoken words!

Then he caught the worst double ear infection doctors had ever seen. There was nothing scarier than watching a two year old scream in pain and twitch in a febrile seizure when his temperature fell too low.

Doctors put tubes in his eardrums to drain out the pus. They healed, swelled up again and needed more surgeries to drain them out. Ludwig was miserable the whole time. Bowser remembered the sleepless nights of walking around, rocking him, putting numbing ear drops in his ears, feeding him antibiotics and applying hot compresses to his head.

Almost overnight he stopped responding to sounds. Speech, music, anything. At first it seemed the swelling and fluid buildup were responsible, but as time went on he started pounding on the piano with his ear pressed against it because that was the only way he could hear it.

His little face twisted in rage. He looked up at Bowser and burst out crying. Even at two years old, he knew something changed.

Ludwig went deaf. He still reacted to loud, low-pitched noises if they were right next to his ears, but couldn't hear speech.

An audiologist expressed concerns about language deprivation while figuring out whether or not hearing aids would help. Bowser worried about it too, so he immersed himself in deaf Koopas to learn Koopa Sign. He chose a deaf teacher, an old grizzled Koopa named Nyle who had quick hands and a quicker wit. Every day, that old guy showed up with his long, knitted scarf and sharp dark blue eyes.

Ludwig and Bowser learned to communicate together.

From the ages of two to six, Ludwig signed exclusively. His first years of education came from deaf teachers in deaf schools.

Fitting hearing aids was an unexpected challenge— he complained of a constant whine.

"B-flat!" Ludwig would sign by his ears, leaving Bowser baffled. He pounded that key on the piano, over and over, even though he didn't hear the sound of it.

The whine turned out to be tinnitus, and it got worse because his first few hearing aids amplified all sounds into useless noise.

His next fitting after that discovery utilized digital hearing aids that reduced the tinnitus while filling in and amplifying the frequencies he still had access to.

For the first time in four years, Ludwig didn't have a constant tone screeching in his skull, and he showed signs of recognizing speech again. He sat at the piano and played without smashing his ear against it.

Bowser almost cried the day Ludwig pressed the high B-flat key and signed, "My ears sing this!"

Ludwig didn't hear like he used to, he never would again, but somehow he kept his perfect pitch and love for music.

He learned how to understand spoken words and wanted to learn how to talk via speech therapy. It took him a year to comprehend speech and another to speak intelligibly and yet another to not shout every time he talked, but he never lost his deaf accent. People mistook it for a lisp caused by his buck tooth and overbite, and he gave up on correcting the misconception.

As he grew up, he only used his hearing aids to play music or communicate with hearing folks. Sign was his first and most preferred language, though he wasn't against speaking.

Ludwig called himself Deaf and never looked back.

And now, the chubby, upset baby who banged on piano keys was a lanky twenty-one year old musician ready to take flight into the world.

Where did all that time go?

Bowser shook himself back to the present. He tapped the light switch a few times, flickering the white spiked shell lamp on the desk Ludwig faced.

Ludwig sat up to regard him.

Tilting his head, Bowser raised his eyebrows, curled two fingers on both hands and twisted them against each other, signing, "Problems?"

Ludwig wiggled his fist up and down. "Yes."

He moved his voluminous blue hair long enough to put his hearing aids in and turned them on. Once positioned, they suction-cupped into place. His hair hid the circular microphones.

"Need help?" Bowser asked aloud.

"Perhaps," Ludwig said. He glowered at his piano keys. On the music holder, an incomplete score full of key changes. "It needs something, and I can't feel it out."

"Huh…" Bowser examined the score, easily audiating what he read. His fingers moved, playing imaginary keys matching the notation. A melancholy melody, like something rising, but the key changes pinched it off before it gained energy.

He pointed to the opening cadence. "What if you make this into a motif down the octave instead of changing keys right away? Save the modulation for later. You're aiming for it to feel like growth, right?"

Ludwig side-eyed him, signing, "Show me?"

Bowser sat on the bench, positioned his fingers on the keys and fluttered them through his suggestion.

"See?" He did it again, this time letting his toe claw rise and fall over the sustain pedal for each chord change to give it more flow.

Ludwig watched him play it one more time while resting a foot over his toe claw to feel it move. His experience of music wasn't the same as Bowser's, he understood it visually and tactilely. Most of the higher pitches he wrote and played only existed in his distant childhood memories.

And the light came on behind his eyes. Once he saw and felt it, everything clicked.

"Ohh! I see!" Ludwig reclaimed the piano bench and repeated what Bowser played down to the last flourish. He grinned, closing his eyes. "That's it!"

Paper went flying as he pulled out fresh sheets to write on.

"There's pancakes and eggs downstairs. I think we ate all the sausage." Bowser leaned on the doorframe. Once again, he was woozy after standing up.

"I'll make myself a tapeworm omelete later," Ludwig waved a hand backwards, harried in his distraction. "I'm unstuck."

Bowser's left shoulder twinged. He rubbed it.

Ludwig's chair creaked. "Are you ill?"

Grumbling, Bowser looked up to find his eldest twisted around in his seat to study him.

"Everybody keeps asking that." He huffed. "What? Do I have spots or something?"

"No, you look pale and tired."

Having three people point out that he didn't seem well was annoying, because the more they said it, the worse he felt!

Bowser cupped the back of his neck and sighed. "Slept like crap. Happens to everybody."

Ludwig turned his head part way and raised a disbelieving brow. His nostrils flared, a little curl of smoke escaping one. He faced forward once more and bent over his sheet music.

"There is blood-marrow soup in the refrigerator. I made it last night. Eat it if you feel unwell. I won't mind."

Grateful to no longer be scrutinized, Bowser nodded and pulled the door shut when he left the room.

"Kart races!" Junior shouted below. "Dad! You promised!"

"Keep your shell on, I'm coming!" Bowser barked back without malice.

Sharp, shooting pain jabbed through his left arm, from armpit to pinky fingertip. Oddly, it was the same ache stuck persistently in his left bottom back tooth.

That time, the stairs really made him lightheaded. His vision lost definition until he bent over and took a deep breath. Even that seemed harder to do. He lashed his tail irritably. Who laid bricks in his ribs and stole all the air in the room?

Pain bloomed in the center of his chest, radiated into his jaw and down his left arm like nails being driven across his nerves. He felt something like it many times before whenever he ate something that didn't agree with him, but this was different. His legs turned rubbery, as if they barely held up his weight. A terror of rising doom twisted his stomach as he leaned on the wall.

No mistaking it.

I'm having a heart attack. Bowser flexed his left arm, wincing. Oh no, oh no…

He thought of not seeing his littlest kid grow up, and the grief of it stabbed deeper than the physical pain.

"This is gonna be fun!" Junior grabbed his left hand, oblivious to what was happening.

"You sure will!" Bowser replied, trying to sound chipper and not terrified or breathless.

The skies outside were muddy brown because of the volcano. Bowser's legs threatened to give way. He clutched Junior's tiny hand, his mind racing for how to escape downstairs to the medical ward without letting on that something was wrong.

They arrived at the garage. Junior had the smallest Kart and it was all tricked out with shiny pipes and spiked bumpers. It looked exactly like Bowser's, reproduced in miniature.

Bowser broke out in a cold sweat upon seating himself behind the wheel— the kind of cold sweat that usually meant a bad time in the bathroom, but without the stomach cramps. Pressure kept strangling his lungs from inside. His eyes wouldn't focus.

"Ready to go, dad?" Junior started his Kart with a rumbling growl. He looked over, blinking. "Dad?"

Get rid of Junior. He can't see this. I'm about to die. I can't die in front of him, he's too young. Play like you're fine, just act fine…

Bowser swallowed a moan of pain, held his chest and plastered a smile on his face. An escape was right in front of him.

"My Kart won't start." A lump welled in his throat as tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.

Junior blinked, staring at him. "I can help—"

"No! I um, I just gotta—" Bowser gasped through another pang— "bang on it with the mallet. Shouldn't take long. Go practice your drift, I'll catch up real soon."

Lying that way felt horrible. Not like the other kind of lying that made him look good.

Sweat dripped down his forehead. He wiped it off, fighting to keep that smile on his face for Junior's sake.

Please, kid, take the bait and go. Please, damn it.

Thankfully, Junior's youth saved him from recognizing the situation. He beamed, eyes aglow, and revved his engine.

"Okay, dad, see you!"

Just when Bowser didn't think his chest could hurt more, the pain swelled further. His fingertips, his tail tip and even his toes all ached. The rest of him slowly went numb as the head rush sensation blurred his vision.

"Hey!" He called.

Junior stopped. "What?"

One of the tears in his eyes leaked onto his cheek. His smile quivered.

"Love ya, brat."

"Love you, too, dad." Junior waved and eased his Kart forward into the tunnel.

Bowser gripped his steering with his left hand, swung himself to the side and somehow made it to his feet. His heart galloped like Mario repeatedly kicking him in the chest from inside. Faster and faster, harder and harder. There wasn't enough air in the world. He grabbed himself where it hurt, but the agony would not be soothed.

Now, he just had to get inside. Maybe, he could get help. But he had to walk.

One step at a time. Come on, I can do this.

The constant kicks in his chest stopped, like a Kart slamming on the brakes.

Oh no…oh please, no! Peach! My kids! Junior!

Tingling numbness overtook him. He fell through time and space. His darkening vision shrank to a lambent pinpoint lost in purple phosphenes.

No, no, no! Junior—

.o

Junior barely turned the corner when he remembered to ask his dad about using the ramp over the lava, so he backed his Kart up to the tunnel.

Bowser stood up from his Kart, grabbed at his chest and took two steps. All of a sudden his eyes rolled back and his mouth opened wide to bare all his teeth. That was the funniest face Junior could remember him making.

He toppled forward, his chin hitting the bricks with a sickening thud that sent a puff of dust up. His whole body thrashed twice, like electric shocks, before laying still again. He snored loudly as he gulped air, his mouth opening and closing the way Cheep-Cheeps pulled out of the water did.

If he was snoring, he was sleeping, but why were his eyes wide open?

Did he have a seizure like Iggy? Iggy had seizures for as long as Junior could remember. Sometimes he acted weird right before he got stiff and shook in a really scary way, and afterwards he woke up so confused that he screamed at people. But sometimes he just acted weird without the full body shaking part and wanted to sleep a lot after it stopped.

There was a fancy word for why Iggy's brain did that, but he didn't remember it at the moment.

"Dad, what are you doing?" Junior ran up and jumped on his spiky shell. "Dad, come on! Get up!"

No response, not a laugh, or a tail smack, or anything.

Junior looked behind him when a musty smell reached his nose.

"Ew! Dad, you're peeing all over the ground!" He bounced on him again, wiggling his shell side to side in a way that always got him yelled at to stop. "Dad, wake up, you're peeing! I thought grownups grew out of sleep-peeing! Ew! Dad! Wake up!"

Bowser kept snoring and gasping, his unblinking eyes staring into nothing. White foam flecked the corners of his mouth. His snout was sickly pale.

Junior slid to the ground, somersaulted forward and raced around the corner towards the sound of a flying blue shell drone. "Roy!"

"What?" Roy poked his head over a boulder.

"Dad's being silly! Come see!"

"What did he do?"

"He fell over asleep!" Junior snickered. "I can't wake him up! His eyes are open! It's weird! He's acting like Iggy after a seizure, but I think he's faking!"

"Huh?" Roy landed his drone and followed him into the garage.

"See?" Junior pointed.

Bowser hadn't moved. His snout was dusky blue and he wasn't gasping as often.

Roy didn't find the snoring or puddle funny. He threw his remote aside and bolted to Bowser's side, shouting, "Morton! MORTON! Get your ass in here!"

Morton's broad face appeared in the garage doorway. "What're you yelling ab—" He didn't laugh either. "Oh, shit! Dad?"

"What's going on?" Junior demanded.

They ignored him. Morton disappeared, and a few seconds later he sprinted in with Boom-Boom, Larry and Ludwig with Wendy trailing many steps behind.

"I'll get the MediKoopas," Wendy said. She cried as she bolted away, not caring that she kicked her high heeled shoes off.

Ludwig knelt to feel around Bowser's neck with two fingers. Roy did the same to his wrists. Morton said something too quiet to hear, and both Roy and Ludwig shook their heads.

"I know how. Move aside."

Boom-Boom pried the massive spiked shell off Bowser and rolled him onto his back. He placed his palm on Bowser's armpit, slid it to the center of his chest, planted the heel of his left hand on that spot, rested the other on top of it and began to push. His movements were quick.

Junior couldn't believe his eyes. Boom-Boom was so strong his compressions dented Bowser's chest! Did he think that would wake him up?

Almost everybody stepped in or around the huge pee puddle, and nobody acted grossed out by it.

Bowser wouldn't rouse.

"I don't like this anymore!" Junior grabbed Ludwig's arm, "Tell dad to stop!"

"Daddy!" Wendy wailed in the distance.

Larry turned away, both hands over his face. "I'm calling Iggy and Lemmy."

He ran into the castle, nearly tripping over Wendy's forgotten shoes.

Boom-Boom continued pushing on Bowser's chest, his face twisted in a terrible grimace.

Some color came back into Bowser's snout, but only enough to turn it white instead of blue.

"Where's that fucking defibrillator?" Roy roared.

"What's a deflibiyator?" Junior wondered aloud.

"It's a machine that zaps people." Ludwig scooped Junior up into his arms. "Come on, you shouldn't watch this."

"But, Ludwig! I wanna see him get zapped awake! It'll be funny!"

"No, you don't, and it won't be."

"He's playing!"

Ludwig went from walking to jogging. "It's a stupid game! We're not watching."

"But Ludw-i-i-i-ig!" Junior's voice came out in spurts when his bigger brother's shoulder bounced against his chest.

The last thing he saw before turning the corner was MediKoopas swarming around his motionless dad.

"Larry, where are Iggy and Lemmy?" Ludwig asked.

Larry looked up from where he sat by the giant TV set in the living room. It was off.

He signed rather than speak, "They're hurrying home."

"Good." Ludwig signed back one-handed.

"Dad is being stupid mean!" Junior whined.

"Yeah," Larry sniffed, wiping his eyes. "It's stupid."

"Do something!" Wendy's far away scream cut through the quiet.

Ludwig carried Junior all the way up to his room and set him down on his bed. His eyes had a distant, odd gleam in them, like everybody outside. He clasped his hands together and smiled, further exposing his buck tooth.

It was the same smile Bowser flashed, one that looked fake and didn't reach his eyes.

"Don't worry about those idiots outside. How would you like to learn bad words in Koopa Sign?"

"Really? There's bad words in it?" Junior perked up, "You won't get mad if I say them?"

"Not in here, but don't say them anywhere else, okay?"

"Will it get you in trouble with dad?"

"Yup. Now watch."

Ludwig straightened his fingers, folded his thumb against his palm to form the finger spelled B and brought his hand vertical against his chin.

"This is how you call somebody a bitch."

Junior formed his hand into the same shape. "Like this?"

"Tap your chin. Mmhmm, there! You got it." Ludwig said.

"Show me a nasty one, come on!"

"A nasty one, huh?"

Ludwig wiggled his fingers while gazing upward with his nose scrunched— that was his Koopa Sign version of 'um' or 'uh'. He stuck up his middle finger while touching his thumb to his chin.

"This is motherfucker. Fingers straight, it's just 'mother', the middle finger is what makes it 'fucker'."

"Ooh! That's really bad!" Junior giggled, mimicking the gesture. He remembered Morton having to chew soap after saying it with his mouth!

"Your expression matters too."

Ludwig twisted his face in a scowl and signed it again in a quick jerking motion.

"See? If you laugh, people will think you're joking. Look like you mean it."

Junior schooled his expression into his best snarl and flashed the sign.

Nodding, Ludwig's face brightened. He slapped the back of his right hand against his left and wiggled both spread hands in the air in deaf applause.

Excited, Junior wagged his tail. "Are there any bad words that look funny?"

Ludwig looked upward again. "Huh, let's see…"

Suddenly, he curled his thumb and index fingers into a circle while keeping his other fingers straight, similar to a finger spelled F, and flipped his hand palm-up.

"Asshole."

He helped Junior shape his hand the correct way. "Now point at me and do that, and you'll call me an asshole."

Junior tried it, adding a scowl for good measure.

Ludwig chuckled. "There, you got it."

"Is there one for…" Junior looked around and whispered the bad word, "shit?"

"For what?"

"S-H-I-T," Junior finger spelled it against his chest like a secret.

"Oh, that's easy." Ludwig grasped his thumb in the opposite fist and pulled it downward, like poop dropping out. "It's the sign for poop, the context is what makes it a swear word."

"But I want to sign it so everybody knows I'm swearing!" Junior copied it a few times.

"Well… here's another way to sign it."

Ludwig made a fist like before, but this time he thrust his thumb into the hole created by his thumb and forefinger.

Giggling, Junior imitated the gesture. Somehow, that one felt dirtier, like he might get in trouble if Bowser caught him doing it.

"Hey, how come you still do signs if you can hear with the ear aids thingies?"

"Because hearing aids don't work in every situation." Ludwig signed it while he spoke. "Koopa Sign was my first language. Sometimes I understand things better when they're signed."

Junior wagged his tail again, wondering if his dad was zapped awake yet. "I thought music was first."

Ludwig crossed his arms and snickered half-heartedly. "You're right. I remember music from before, but not language."

"Is dad awake yet?"

The question created tension in Ludwig's shoulders.

"Uh…probably not."

He looked to the side at the electric guitar hanging on the wall.

"Want to learn some guitar chords?"

Junior liked that guitar, it was blue like Ludwig's hair and its shape reminded him of a weird lightning bolt.

He brightened and bounced from foot to foot on Ludwig's slab of a bed. "Can it blow stuff up?"

Ludwig shook his head, seeming to fight to keep the smile on his face. "Not this one, but someday I might design one that can."

"Okay! Teach me! I wanna play it!"

.o

Bowser waited on a spiral staircase in a corridor made of bricks. They weren't any bricks he'd seen before, they had a crystalline, iridescent sheen. The space was dim, a perpetual late twilight. He could barely make out the individual steps curving around the corner.

What did he wait for? Had he always been here? What was time?

Distant shouts echoed in his ears. He glanced over his shoulder to find nothing but black emptiness.

Everything inside him told him he should be frightened by his unfamiliar surroundings, yet he felt euphoric detachment instead.

Bowser set one foot in front of the other and slowly ascended the stairs. Each step was just wide enough for his feet.

Polychromatic light exuded from the walls. The higher he climbed, the brighter it became. He rushed forward faster in search of its source.

At last he reached a point where the light consumed his hands when he raised them to shield his eyes. The overwhelming glow didn't hurt, but he squinted as if he expected it to. Somehow the radiance only blinded him when he looked straight at it.

He stared down at his feet and continued ascending with his hands pressed against the glowing walls to help him stay balanced.

Several— minutes? hours? years?— later, his foot raised and fell further than he expected. No more steps, just a flat floor in a straight corridor.

Here, the brilliance swallowed everything, even his feet. This was the polar opposite of dark. Try as he might, he could not see anything except white.

Warm wuthering blew towards the light, ruffling his hair and beckoning him forward. Every time he felt it, a love beyond imagining swept through him, as if love was all that existed here. He felt no pain, no fear, only bliss.

Bowser stood still, arms extended forward, basking in the endless brilliance. Colors he never knew existed flashed before his eyes in flickering waves. Music emanated from the walls, each thrumming chord more fantastic than its predecessor.

He found the Great Beyond. What else could it be?

A grin stretched across his face. Nothing else needed to happen, he could stay here in this placid beauty forever.

Thunder roared behind him. Tremors rocked the luminescent corridor. He snapped out of his trance and looked back to see lightning rushing at him.

Pain wracked his chest. That sensation had been a distant memory until then. Feeling it again jarred everything he thought he knew about existence.

Hours later, or was it years? Lightning surged a second time, worse than the first.

THUD-THUD, THUD-THUD…a tenebrous echo out of tune from the glorious chord.

The light and music withdrew through a doorway like a torch thrown into a well, taking the exquisite love with it.

"No!" Bowser bolted after it, only for a wooden door to slam shut in his face.

Pressure crushed his chest. He roared in tearful rage as he tumbled backwards through the ceiling of a brightly lit operating room with someone sprawled on the table. Black tools entered their chest at three points and the monitor screen above their head showed their pinkish-red beating heart. The coronary arteries looked way too narrow, were they supposed to be like that?

Bowser didn't realize hearts made such a twisting motion to beat.

"Damn, his arteries are so small. It's going to restenose if we don't bypass it." The surgeon watched the screen, eyes narrowing, "We have to open him up. Call Richard, stat."

Bowser was still studying the coronary arteries when he slammed forward again, and timeless oblivion swallowed him up.

He missed the light, mourned the music and ached for peace. Then he thought no more.

.o

Distant noises downstairs roused Junior out of his nap. Bowser wasn't there to wake him or bully the chefs into giving him a piece of fudge cake.

Junior realized he was on Ludwig's bed instead of his own. He jumped up to look for any puddles, but found none. Good, the last thing he needed was his oldest brother finding out he peed the bed!

Why wasn't Bowser back yet? It couldn't be that hard to wake somebody up!

He crept out of the room to peek over the stairs where he saw all his older siblings sitting next to the fireplace in the living room. They had the dining room chairs pulled over there in some kind of secret meeting. The fireplace wasn't lit, so it yawned like a black, empty cave.

Among them, the red shelled MediKoopa that Junior would later know as Neil. His eyelids drooped like he jumped over a thousand Spinies without rest and still had to go to work after.

"…took forty-five minutes to get it started again and stabilize him. The angiogram revealed a complete blockage of the left anterior descending coronary artery and our attempt at thrombolysis failed. We performed an angioplasty to buy time and attempted an emergency beating heart bypass to restore full blood flow. Unfortunately, due to the size of his coronary arteries, we had to switch to an open heart procedure for the graft. He went into ventricular fibrillation again after coming off the bypass pump. We got him back easier the second time and closed him up, yet…"

Neil kept talking, using scary words like myocardial infarction, ischemia, cerebral hypoxia and coma, none of which made any sense.

"King Bowser has a Crash heart, which makes heart attacks more likely with age. Crash hearts can be hereditary—"

"Enough big words," Junior bounded down the stairs. "Where's dad?"

Neil startled into a standing position.

Junior glared at the gathering that dared to convene without him.

Everybody's eyes darted to each other, looking everywhere but at him. Lemmy rocked back and forth, hugging himself. Wendy turned away, sniffling. Iggy stared at his hands.

Finally, Morton crossed his arms. "He's busy doing stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"I dunno, the ehh, the, ehh…stuff…you know? Stuff dads…do?"

Larry smacked him in the back of the head. "Good going, butt-munch."

"Let's see you do better!" Roy snapped at them both.

"He's busy," Iggy said, face expressionless.

Ludwig gestured to Iggy, as if silently agreeing.

Again, with the eyeballs darting to and fro to each other. Boom-Boom got up and walked outside like he couldn't stand the room any longer.

"Did he go try to marry Peach again?" Junior planted his hands on his hips. That had to be it.

"Busy, busy?" Lemmy murmured it like a question rather than a response. He rolled his green rubber ball between his hands. Bowser called that stimming and said nobody was allowed to steal that ball or make fun of Lemmy for using it.

"Pfft, you're all silly."

With that, Junior marched into the kitchen, took a whole fudge cake out of the fridge and held it overhead. "I'm gonna eat this whole thing! Who's gonna stop me?"

Vivi, the Koopa Paratroopa head chef, snatched it from his hands so fast her false eyelashes almost flew off.

"I will. We won't have children with upset stomachs throwing up on my clean floors."

"Aw, come on!" Junior balled his fists. "Dad always lets me have some!"

She compromised by giving him a slice. He devoured it while his older siblings continued their secretive talk.

Fine, if they wanted to exclude him, maybe they were all jerks!

.o

Bowser didn't appear at bedtime. Junior almost threw a fit. Dad always tucked him in at night!

He screamed and flung his toys around until Wendy came upstairs.

"Knock it off!"

"I want dad!" Junior wailed. He was a ball of rage beyond containment. "I miss dad!"

"He's still busy." She sighed, dropping her face into her hands. "Junior, come on, everybody's tired."

He hurled blocks at her. She deflected them easily.

"Fine! How about I read a book? Okay? Will you shut up if I read to you?"

Not as good as dad, but…Junior sniffled and conceded. He curled up on his stomach, letting his big sister drape his blankets around him. Her high heels scraped along the floor as she sat in a chair by the bed.

She read him Peter Piranha's Bad Day, doing her best to make up silly voices like their dad would. Surprisingly, she did a good job!

"…and after a bad, awful, horrific, terrible day, Peter ate the jerks who made his day bad, awful, horrific and terrible. He went to sleep hoping tomorrow might be better. The end!"

She slapped the book shut and stuffed it back on the shelf.

Junior pretended to sleep because she seemed mad about something, and she got scarily mean when she was mad.

"Finally asleep." The chair creaked when she got up and left, pulling the door shut behind her.

But the doors weren't soundproof, so Junior lifted his head to listen when she talked outside.

"Psst, Iggy, he's asleep. Did you see daddy?"

"He looks bad, Wendy. They got him hooked up to all the machines."

She sniffed, voice cracking, "You know somebody is gonna have to talk to Junior eventually. He's not stupid, he knows something's wrong."

"I don't want to tell him. I suck at that."

"You suck at everything."

"Hey!"

"Shh! Don't wake him up. Come on, let's go."

Their voices faded down the hall, and Junior drifted off to sleep. He woke again to find it was still night. One o'clock in the morning, if he read his clock correctly.

The mess he made last night rocketed forward in his mind, so he felt around with his tail. Still dry!

Maybe dad got unhooked from the whatever machines, came back and went to bed in his room.

Junior sneaked out, skulked past his siblings' closed doors and bolted up the flight of stairs to his dad's massive tower bedroom. The enormous slab of a bed was empty.

He checked the bathroom, all the windows and even the closet. He sat on the bed, head in his hands, wondering when his dad would pop out to startle him.

The wall at the foot of Bowser's bed had eight portraits of all his kids as hatchlings.

Ludwig was all hair and eyebrows, and slept on his stomach while sucking his thumb.

Iggy and Lemmy huddled together since they came from the same egg— Lemmy reached for a yellow rubber ball while Iggy clutched a bright green rattle.

Roy was upside down, mid-somersault, looking baffled with his feet dangling down next to his head.

Wendy proudly slurped her sparkly pacifier as she held a toy gold ring.

Morton had a huge head compared to his body and had the angriest face a baby could have.

Larry looked backwards over his shoulder, his hair nothing more than a dark ridge atop his head.

Junior was swaddled in blankets and sucking happily on his white pacifier.

"Junior, are you supposed to be up?" Asked one of the two Hammer Brother guards who patrolled the halls at night.

"Yes," Junior lied, crossing his arms. He scrambled across his dad's bed to regard them. "Is dad playing hide and seek with me?"

The guards exchanged the same weird, sad look his siblings exchanged.

"You know what? He is."

"I knew it!" Junior made a beeline for the stairs. "I'm gonna search the whole castle 'til I find him."

As he walked away, he heard the other one mutter, "That'll keep him busy."

"You sure about that, Martinet?"

"Shut up, Charles, or I'll hammer you."

"Nah. You can't touch this."

Neither of them counted on Junior starting at the bottom levels. The dungeon was too obvious, so he went out of the left elevator door.

Ten minutes later, he found his dad motionless in the medical ward and started screaming.

.o

Half an hour of screeching, blowing fireballs and stomping later, Junior sank onto the floor with his head in his hands. The two exhausted MediKoopas sat on either side of him, mirroring his posture while they explained what happened.

"…so your daddy's heart got sick because of the clog," Celine finished telling him. "Neil had to do an operation to put a new vein on his heart that bypasses the clog. That's why it's called a bypass."

"On his corner arteries?"

"Co-ro-na-ry," Celine corrected him gently. "Yes."

A monitor beeped. The ventilator whooshed. Those noises were constant.

"But you fixed it, so why won't he wake up?" Junior sniffled, eyes puffy from crying.

"Brains don't like being without oxygen either," Neil spoke just as quietly. "Your brain is a complicated organ. If it doesn't get enough oxygen, it shuts off everything it can to keep your heart and lungs working. Like, uh…"

"Like when the power goes out when a fuse blows." Celine gestured. "Remember the time your daddy made all the lights go out trying to build a robot?"

Junior brightened for a moment. "I remember that! Mario blew it up, though."

"Uh-huh." She nodded. "Well, that's what happened to your daddy's brain. It's going to take time for his lights to come back on, and they might not come on at the same time or in the right order."

"Is it like Iggy when he has those scary looking seizures where he shakes on the floor?"

"Yes, it's similar." Celine dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

Neil pushed himself to stand, unaware of the dark burn mark one of Junior's fireballs left on his red shell. "We're also giving him medicine that makes him sleep so his heart doesn't beat too fast. His heart is sick, remember? It has to heal, or else it might try to stop again."

"Does it hurt?" Junior hugged himself, his tiny tail wagging behind him.

"Nope. The medicine stops the pain." Celine uncurled to stand, too.

"I mean heart attacks. Does it hurt when they happen?"

Neil nodded. "Yes, sometimes."

"So he knew he was having it? Why didn't he tell me?"

"Because he loves you so much that he tried to spare you from being scared."

Junior scowled, crossing his arms and thumping his tail on the floor. "I got scared anyway. Look at all this!"

Celine took a deep breath and offered Junior her hand. "Do you want to know what all this equipment does?"

"You know what it's all for?" He took her hand and eyed the machinery surrounding Bowser like some kind of nightmarish alien nest.

"Mmhmm. Part of my job is watching it to check on him and make sure it's all working right."

"Okay. What's that big tube in his mouth?"

Celine followed to where he pointed. "That, my little liege, is a ventilator. See how his chest goes up and down when the tube moves? It's helping him breathe, because he isn't doing a very good job of it by himself right now."

"Oh, it's so big!"

"It's because he's a big Koopa with big lungs."

"My dad is the biggest and the baddest! I'm gonna be that big someday!" Junior clenched his fist and pointed. "Now tell me what that does."

"That's the heart monitor…"

Celine patiently explained everything in the room, bit by bit. All the scary machinery had a purpose, and none of it was supposed to hurt his dad.

"What's that?" Junior gestured at the funny looking bulb hanging off the tube in Bowser's chest.

"Drainage." Neil didn't miss a beat. "We don't want fluid or blood building up in his chest while he's healing, so the drain gives it somewhere to go. It'll come out later."

Okay, that wasn't so scary if it did a good thing.

"Where's the zappy thing?" Junior looked around, even peeking under the bed. "Roy yelled about it. He called it a long word."

Pausing, Celine cocked her head. "Defibrillator?"

"That! Ludwig didn't let me watch dad get zapped!"

She bowed her head, flashing one of those weird smiles that was both happy and sad.

"Oh, little prince, it doesn't zap people awake. Do you remember how I talked about the heart being electrical?"

He nodded, his eyes momentarily focusing on the monitor above the bed. The spikes denoting his dad's heartbeat stayed steady, with weird hills in between.

Celine cupped her hands together and squeezed them in a steady rhythm.

"The electrical signals tell your heart how to beat, when to beat and how fast to beat. They normally follow a set sequence, so your heart pumps the right way to fill up and get the blood around your body."

She moved her hands slightly apart and wiggled her fingers instead of steady squeezes. "Fibrillation means your heart is shivering instead of pumping because the electrical signals scramble up. Your heart gets confused. If you leave it alone, oxygen doesn't get around your body, and you die."

Junior blinked and held his chest. "Dad's heart shivered?"

"Mmhmm." Celine stopped wiggling her hands. "But hearts are really, really smart organs. You can help it reset itself if it gets confused. That's what a defibrillator is for."

"You mean that thing can make somebody come back to life if their heart stops?"

"That's a movie myth." She waved her hand, shaking her head. "It doesn't jumpstart you like a dead car battery. Defibrillators interrupt the confused signals— like when your dad roars to make everybody be quiet at the dinner table and eat their food like they're supposed to— so we use it to stop your heart and it resets itself!"

He gasped, his mind utterly blown by the concept. "Wow! Can I zap Mario with it?"

Celine laughed, covering her mouth. "Eh, not a good idea. You're not supposed to use it on people with a heart that's working right."

"What happens if you do?"

Neil checked the IV bags and wrote something on his clipboard. "The same thing you get if you stick your finger in an electric socket. A shock."

There went that plan to prank somebody. Junior stared up at the bed where his dad stayed motionless.

"There's one more thing you have to know," Celine rolled a little black stool next to the right side of the enormous bed. "He might be able to sense that you're here, and hear you when you talk to him."

Junior wasn't so sure. "Can I touch him?"

"As long as you don't fiddle with any wires or tubes. Here." Celine pushed a button that lowered the whole bed closer to the ground.

Junior was able to climb from the stool onto the bed, where he hugged Bowser's head and buried his face in his soft, messy reddish-orange hair that smelled like the hot rocks outside. He liked that smell a lot more than the stinging chemicals everywhere else in the medical ward.

All at once, it hit him how sick Bowser was and how close he came to dying. If anything he did caused it, if he was being punished, he had to make it right!

"I'm sorry I laughed and jumped on you when you fell," he whispered it like a secret. "If you're doing a coma because you're mad, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, dad."

Tears brimmed in his eyes. "Come back…you gotta come back. I miss you. We're supposed to race Karts, remember?"

The pulse in Bowser's neck throbbed against Junior's wrist in time with the beeping heart monitor. Junior watched the lines trace across the screen.

Louder, he spoke to Celine and Neil, "I thought it looked funny when he fell. Now it doesn't feel funny anymore." He sniffed, wiping his eyes. "Did he fall because his heart did the shivering thing?"

Celine nodded solemnly, patting his tiny spiked shell. "You didn't know what was wrong."

"Will you zap him more if his heart does it again?"

"If that's what it takes," Celine replied, "Yes."

Junior stopped hugging Bowser's head. He climbed off the bed. The lump in his throat kept growing, and he didn't want to cry in front of anybody again. There was nowhere to hide. He grabbed Bowser's huge shell away from the wall, crawled underneath it and bawled his little heart out without realizing his hiding place wasn't soundproof.

.o

Junior's older siblings weren't pleased to find out he wandered into the medical ward alone. Well, phooey on them! He found out because they wouldn't tell him anything. Now he knew everything!

"You were supposed to be in bed," Ludwig chided him without any real venom.

Roy's scowl was evident through his sunglasses. "Shut up, you weren't gonna tell him."

"Neither were you!" Iggy grumbled, most of his attention focused on a handheld video game that had a little elf man in green wielding a sword.

"I never wanted to be the one to tell him." Wendy jingled her gold bangles against each other. "So you losers better not look at me!"

"Not me. Too scared." Lemmy clutched his green ball.

Morton huffed without saying anything.

Larry looked away guiltily. "He found out, I guess we're all off the hook now."

"Nuh-uh!" Junior stomped his feet on the metal elevator floor. "You all knew, and you said he was busy!"

"We were going to tell you."

"When? Ludwig, when?"

"I—"

"None of you were gonna!" Junior snapped.

"Stop, stop, stop, STOP!" Lemmy grabbed both sides of his head and crouched on the floor. "No more! No more noise!"

But Junior needed to be mean to somebody, so he yanked his older sibling's yellow rat tail ponytail and pulled the emergency alarm. Lemmy shrieked and threw himself against the elevator doors. He clutched his head and retreated into his shell, sobbing as hard as Junior did an hour ago.

Ludwig scrunched his face up and switched his hearing aids off. He pushed the alarm knob back in, ending the noise. His eyes were hard and cold, like dark diamonds.

"Stop! Shut up!" He signed in quick, sharp flicks of his hands. "He's our dad, too! We're all upset, we're all scared!"

The elevator dinged before Junior could clobber him.

"I don't care!" He signed so fast he fumbled most of them. "Don't follow me!"

Lemmy was a sponge for other peoples' emotions. He sensed the tension and screamed inside his shell.

Junior kicked Lemmy's shell, sending him ricocheting into the hall before taking off up to his room. Wendy caught Lemmy when he zigzagged back towards the elevator.

"Hey!" Morton boomed, but Junior ignored him.

"Geez, we should've told him," She sighed in the distance. "Lemmy, he's gone. It's okay."

Junior slammed his door and threw himself across his bed. He fell asleep for a short time, woke up soaked in pee and sobbed because his dad wasn't there to help him clean it up.

Still crying, he ripped the sopping waterproof top sheet off and pushed it down the laundry chute. There was one left.

He cleaned up in the bathroom and laid down, but didn't dare fall back asleep in case it happened again.

.o

"Those mushroom-headed losers!" Wendy's voice pierced the quiet halls.

"Come on, Wendy, it's too early!" Morton yelled back.

"This is worth screaming about! Some fungus face over in the Mushroom Kingdom spread a rumor that daddy died!"

Now a bunch of doors flew open and several voices gave the same response.

"Huh?"

"What a jerk!" Larry growled. "Who did it? I'll smack 'em."

"I'm going back to sleep." Roy's door banged shut.

Junior found the glossy paper Wendy threw on the ground in a huff.

KING BOWSER KOOPA DEAD? The big, black headline was next to a picture of Bowser in his Koopa Clown Car.

Ludwig stuck his head out of his door, his hair in disarray and eyes drooping from being half asleep. He was so fresh out of sleep that his speech sounded like gobbledegook instead of words.

"You're mumbling," Junior signed clumsily, hoping he shaped his hands correctly. "Everybody is being stupid about—"

Wendy snatched and held up the magazine. "This!"

Ludwig took it, flipped through it and flung it aside. That time, he spoke clearer. "It's garbage."

His head disappeared around the corner when he shut his door.

"Weirdos." Junior wrinkled his nose.

Wendy kicked the crumpled magazine against the wall. "Tabloids spread stupid rumors. I hope daddy gets better. He'll scare them straight!"

"Wendy, it's five in the morning! Let me sleep!" Iggy bellowed through his door.

She sighed, her shoulders dropping, and stomped back to her room. Junior heard her sob bitterly as soon as her door clicked shut.

Junior barged into her room and closed the door behind him.

"What do you want, Bowsie Ju-ju?" She shrieked.

He flinched at the nickname and bit back his snide retort.

"You're so mad about a stupid magazine."

"I miss daddy!" Wendy wailed, her eyes puffy and red from crying. She flailed her arms, bracelets jangling. "Everything feels wrong!"

Junior inhaled deeply for strength. Bowser always fixed it when she cried, but he wasn't here. Junior held out his hands and tried saying what his dad said.

"Do you need a hug?"

Wendy gazed down at him mid-sob and melted into his arms with her head on his shoulder. She clung onto his shell, inconsolable.

Sometimes, people just needed to cry.

Nothing felt right without Bowser around, and everybody noticed.

.o

Life became a strange new normal, with days spent in the medical ward instead of outside playing. Junior got to know more nurses besides Celine.

There was Stevie, who had a deep voice and always decorated her midnight blue shell with patterns or rhinestones. Judy's yellow shell stood out wherever she went and she wore a ribbon around her head to match. Elton was a Paratroopa with a lime green shell who never appeared without his fancy tinted glasses, and he had an endless supply of them. And nobody could miss Josh with his big, soulful brown eyes and reddish-brown shell.

Bowser's condition didn't improve. His eyes stayed closed and he remained unresponsive. Sometimes the nurses made the bed sit him up, or it somehow folded in half sideways to lay him on his side.

Once, Junior saw them lift him off it in a huge sling to change the bedding from solid white sheets to white sheets with gray pinstripes. The sling also weighed him.

"Is seven hundred pounds a lot?" He asked.

"Your dad is a big guy," Josh answered, jotting the number on a clipboard. "He weighed seven-thirty when he first came here."

"Is he shrinking?"

"Haha! Not the way you think. Not moving makes your muscles get smaller. He'll gain that weight back if he wakes up and moves around again."

"If?" Junior balked.

Josh blinked at him. "Er…when."

"He's going to wake up and get better."

"You're right. I misspoke." Josh set his pen down, "My apologies, young majesty."

Junior stormed out of there because he didn't want to get mad and bother his dad. He rode the elevator up and walked out just in time to see Lemmy sprint through the hall in tears.

"Whoa!" Iggy jumped up from his video game, "Lemmy!"

Lemmy threw himself across a beanbag chair on the living room floor. Rather than answer in words, he opened his phone up to his Blendr dating profile and selected a gangly Koopa who looked like he styled his hair with bacon grease.

"Asshole said he doesn't date shrimps! He thought I faked my age! I'm not a kid! I'm short, I'm not a damn kid!"

Iggy thumbed through a tirade of messages. His face twisted in a scowl. "Want me to hack his profile and embarrass him?"

Lemmy nodded, sniffling and rubbing his eyes. "And change his bio to say he's a dickhead!"

"What's happening?" Junior barged in with his hands on his hips. "Was somebody mean to Lemmy?"

"Yes. Besides you." Lemmy smacked the floor with his tail. He spent hours that morning showering and combing his rainbow Mohawk to look perfect, too!

"Edit pictures of poop over his face and tell everybody he eats farts." Junior waved his fists in the air. He didn't care who got pranked so long as it wasn't himself.

Lemmy erupted in mirth in between fits of sobbing.

Iggy cackled and texted himself a link to the loser's profile, then took out his own phone. "That's a good idea! I will!"

He hid Lemmy's phone again, "But you can't look. Because it's adult stuff."

"Aw, c'mon!"

"Nope, sorry."

"Fine!" Junior stomped into the kitchen and rummaged in the fridge. He found a drumstick to munch on and left the bone on the plate when he put it back in.

A half hour later, Iggy and Lemmy screamed with laughter. Junior didn't get to see much, but he glimpsed a profile picture of a giant Birdo turd superimposed over the Koopa's face, the words Shit Eater as a profile name and a bio stating, I am a fart huffing dickhead!

"Now I'm gonna change his password and upload the Goomba porn," Iggy whispered to Lemmy.

He twiddled around with his thumbs and showed him the phone, making sure it stayed pointed away from Junior.

They burst out guffawing so hard that Lemmy rolled onto his back on the floor. Iggy helped him sit up.

"Feel better, twin?"

"I feel better, twin!" Lemmy leaned on him, smiling despite his eyes being red from crying.

Iggy patted Lemmy's shell. "Sometimes you have to get through a bunch of dickheads first."

"Ludwig got a guy on his first try!" Lemmy sniffed.

"That was pure luck. Don't worry, the right guy for you is out there."

"Yo, guys, what's up?" Morton stopped to see what the ruckus was about.

Iggy showed him the defiled profile. Morton snorted and padded into the kitchen.

"Hey! Who ate my drumstick?"

Junior bolted upstairs to escape accusation.

.o

There was the evening when Wendy got sick of seeing Bowser's messy hair, so she combed it and sprayed it with something to stop it from tangling.

"I wish you would wake up, daddy," she sighed, and set to work filing all his claws to smooth, perfect points.

Junior spent that whole afternoon on the floor, drawing pictures. He drew all the positions the nurses laid Bowser in and every piece of equipment hooked up to him.

Stevie helped him reign in all his runaway crayons. "Be careful, Prince Junior, someone can trip on these."

There was a morning where the whole family surrounded Bowser's bed. They leaned on the mattress and whispered to each other. Everybody took turns holding his hands. Lemmy napped in the crook of his arm, and nobody bothered him.

The ventilator whooshed. Monitors beeped. Bowser didn't move.

Roy's face twisted behind his sunglasses when it was his turn to hold one of Bowser's hands.

"I saw everything they did to him," he said, which caught everybody's attention. "They had Jack and Black taking turns doing chest compressions. But when they got tired, it took two Koopa Troopas working together."

Tears dribbled from under Roy's shades. "Dad was just laying there, twitching, while they did everything to him. Neil kicked me out after I kept screaming at 'em to keep trying. It ain't like on TV at all."

He sniffled. "He still looks like he did that morning."

Wendy put her hand on his shell.

Morton did, too, and added, "Let it out, buddy. We're here."

Roy's forehead wrinkled. He grimaced and broke down sobbing.

Big, tough Roy cried.

"It ain't fair, dad!"

Everybody gathered closer to him without a word. They held onto him while he gripped Bowser's hand, and nobody made fun of him for crying.

.o

"Ah, clear lungs," Neil whispered, moving the stethoscope chest piece across Bowser's plastron. "Beautiful noise."

"Finally clear?" Celine murmured back.

"Mmhmm. No more fluid."

Junior got to watch Neil and Celine take the dressing off Bowser's chest. He expected a giant hole, and instead there were…staples? They resembled a zipper running horizontally across the plastron ridges in the middle of his chest.

"This is an incision," Celine explained. "Neil cut across here to expose the muscles underneath. Then he had to cut up and down like this," she gestured vertically between Bowser's chin and belly, "and after that he had to saw through his sternum to operate on his heart."

"Whoa! Are there staples inside him too?"

"Nope, his muscles got stitched up like cloth using thread that dissolves after a while, and we used a metal plate with screws to put his sternum back together. Those will stay there forever."

Celine used something that looked like a cross between scissors and pliers to gently pluck up the staples. They bent into funny W shapes while being removed. There were fifty seven. Junior counted them before and after.

Bowser scrunched up his forehead as Celine wiped a disinfectant wipe over his chest and applied a bunch of sticky strips across the incision line. That was all the reaction he gave, but, after weeks of nothing, it got Junior's hopes up.

"His eyebrows moved!" Junior jumped to his feet. "I saw them!"

"Did they?" Celine leaned over and rubbed Bowser's chest roughly. "Bowser, sir?"

Try as she might, she couldn't get him to do it again.

Junior danced around anyway because his dad moved!

.o

A week of not much passed by. Junior didn't go into the medical ward every day…in fact everybody took turns.

Time dragged. Days ran together. Nurses moved Bowser's IV lines from one area of his tail to a spot further down. They were stuck into his left arm, his hand, then moved to his right arm and hand. After a few days, they went back onto his tail.

Fear of unknowns faded into boredom and waiting.

Exchanges about Bowser became:

"How's dad?"

And the answers varied.

Roy sniffed, setting down the bone he ate all the meat off of. "I saw him try to cough when Josh suctioned him."

"He gripped my hand." Iggy said with his mouth full.

"He held my ball!" Lemmy clapped his hands.

Wendy wiped her mouth. "His eyebrows moved when I brushed his hair."

"I saw him move his whole tail once." Larry picked at his teeth with his pinkie claw.

Junior felt left out because he only saw him move once. He nudged Ludwig's arm and signed, "Everybody else says they saw dad move."

Raising his eyebrows, he went on, "Did you see him move?"

Ludwig licked ketchup off his thumb and signed back, "He flinched while Judy swabbed his mouth."

Morton slammed his hands down on the tabletop and signed while he spoke, "Moving around doesn't mean shit 'til he opens his eyes and wakes up. We don't know if he's all there."

He left, abandoning his plate and silverware.

Ludwig sneered at his retreating shell.

Junior helped himself to the leftover meat.

It wasn't the same without Bowser's huge burps making them laugh, so he tried belching as loud as he could.

Nobody found it funny.

"Eat without being gross," Wendy grumbled.

Roy burped louder and smirked when she scowled. Lemmy threw tomato bits at him.

"Stop." Ludwig signed. "This isn't the place or time."

They spent the rest of dinner in stony silence.

.o

Things weren't much better the next morning, either.

Junior found Lemmy sitting on Bowser's bed, rocking back and forth while staring at his glowy ball that faded through all the colors of the rainbow. His colorful mohawk stuck almost a foot up off his head, his attempt to look taller.

He was nineteen, same as Iggy, but he stayed shorter than everybody else. People mistook him for a little kid all the time, and sometimes he acted like one.

Bowser had a word for why, but Junior couldn't remember it. Artistic, or something.

When Lemmy saw Junior approach, he turned his back with a huff.

"You kicked me," he grumbled. "I didn't forget!"

"I was mad." Junior shrugged.

"Jerk."

"Wimp."

"Fart breath!"

"Dickhead!"

"What's a dickhead?"

"You are."

"Am not!"

"Are, too!" Lemmy got up, still keeping his back turned. "I miss dad."

"Me, too." Junior grumbled, wagging his tail. "Anyway, turd brains, I'm supposed to tell you breakfast is ready. Stop being mad."

"You kicked me!"

"So?"

"Say sorry!"

Junior stopped moving his tail. He shot out an insincere apology. "Sorry? Sorry. Stop being mad now."

"Buttface."

Lemmy tossed his glowy ball up and down. It wasn't squishy like his green one, but it went through colors faster each time it bounced off a surface.

"I said sorry!"

"Turd burglar!"

"Booger eater!" Junior stuck his tongue out.

"I don't eat those anymore!"

"Booger licker!"

"Hey!" Lemmy's tail lashed. "I don't do that either!"

"Booger smearer!"

"Snot face!"

Gasping, Junior wiped his runny nose. "Shut up!"

"HA! Gotcha!"

At least he didn't call me a bedwetter, Junior thought. "You stinky sh—"

"Hey!"

Wendy's voice cut him off. Her heels clacked up to the door. She grasped the doorframe, her painted silvery-gray claws shiny against the matte stone.

"C'mon guys, what's going on? Are you fighting again?"

Lemmy and Junior looked at each other. Eye contact with Lemmy was a rare treat, especially since only one of his eyes pointed where he wanted it to. They both got the same idea at the same time.

"Do we get her?" Lemmy whispered.

"Yeah!" Junior nodded.

Their eyes shifted to Wendy.

"Barfhead! Barfhead!" They shouted in unison, pretending to throw up in her direction. "Wendy is a barfhead!" Their fake puke noises grew louder between each chant.

Wendy's eyes widened and her painted pink mouth dropped open. She huffed, walking away with a contemptuous flip of her bow-tipped tail.

"Boys are so stupid! Ugh!"

Their earlier scuffle forgotten about, Junior and Lemmy slapped hands and laughed as they jumped on Bowser's stone slab bed.

"Barfhead! Barfhead! Wendy is a barfhead!"

Eventually, they bounced downstairs in search of food.

When Junior went down to see Bowser later, he noticed Lemmy left his glowy ball on the bedside table

.o

The energy in the castle was different that morning when Junior clambered over a chair to steal toast off Iggy's neglected plate. It had ash paste on it, his favorite topping. He devoured it in two bites before his sibling turned back to discover the pilfering.

"Hey!"

Lemmy took the next piece before Iggy got to it. They chased each other around the table until one of the cooks barked at them to knock it off.

"Twin! Pill?" Lemmy rapped on Iggy's shell.

Iggy puffed on his glasses and cleaned them with a cloth. "I just took it."

"Depakote! De-pa-kote!" Lemmy chanted it, hopping from tile to tile along the kitchen floor.

The cooks set out more toast, so he snagged some and gave a piece to Iggy.

Roy and Larry conversed excitedly over their half-eaten waffles. Morton squinted at instructions for building a Goomba-shaped drone while nibbling his eggs.

Ludwig came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a napkin. He headed into the living room and switched the TV on with the volume muted, which activated closed captions.

Wendy took dainty bites of her waffle while perusing a Teen Koopa Vogue magazine article about false eyelashes.

"Iggy's out!" Lemmy exclaimed.

"Got him." Roy said. "Wendy, clear space and time this."

Plates and silverware shifted on the table.

Junior served himself sausage, waffles and a bunch of ground up meat. By the time he came into the dining area, Roy had Iggy sitting at the table with all the breakfast stuff shoved to the opposite side. Iggy took his glasses off and put them back on over and over, blinking rapidly.

"It's okay," Lemmy climbed into Iggy's lap, which kept him from getting up off the chair.

Wendy carried on eating, albeit further away. Larry started gathering empty plates.

"Two minutes," Wendy said.

Roy caught Iggy's glasses when he tried to set them down in mid air.

Iggy's left hand stayed suspended like he forgot it existed. The whole left side of his body began to twitch and a low croaking noise emanated from his throat.

"Hang in there, buddy, this is the back half," Morton rubbed Iggy's shoulder.

Junior bit into his toast.

"Is he gonna TC on us?" Roy whispered.

"Don't think so." Morton shook his head. "He's not screamin'."

Lemmy wrapped his arms around Iggy's neck and nuzzled his cheek on his chest. "Love you, twin."

By then, Iggy's head had almost twisted completely backwards. He kept making a horrible croaking noise in his throat.

Junior looked away. Peoples' necks weren't supposed to do that.

Ludwig came to the edge of the living room.

"Need help?" His voice sounded muffled back in his throat, it always did whenever he talked with his hearing aids turned off.

Roy shook his head and tapped his index finger, middle finger and thumb together. "No. It's almost over."

Ludwig nodded and returned to watching TV. Soccer matches, judging by what Junior glimpsed.

Iggy's twitching stopped abruptly and he faced forward again, prompting Lemmy to jump off his lap. He folded his arms on the table and flopped his head on top of them.

"You with us?" Roy asked.

No answer, so he wasn't yet.

Morton kept rubbing his shoulder. That's what Bowser would do if he was there.

Roy set Iggy's glasses on the table. Iggy reached for them to put them on, but kept his head down.

"You with us, Iggster?" Roy tried again.

Iggy nodded without speaking.

"Sorry, buddy, you had a seizure." Morton gave his shoulder a squeeze.

"Three minutes, that time," Wendy put her magazine next to her plate. She wrote it on scratch paper and slid it over. "Here, for your seizure log."

Her pencil marks said focal dyscognitive seizure, 9:30am-9:33am.

Iggy laid his hand on it so it wouldn't get lost. He wasn't recovered enough to talk.

Lemmy pushed his chair next to Iggy's and sat with him.

Morton scooted their breakfast stuff back to where they had it earlier. There were fewer plates because Larry got rid of the empty ones. Such a neat freak, he cleaned up any mess he made, even if it was just a candy wrapper or crumbs.

"How're you doing?" He bent over Iggy.

"Dunno," Iggy mumbled. "Tired."

Breakfast resumed, albeit quieter than before.

"When are we gonna go see dad?" Junior finally asked.

"Iggy just had a seizure. Read the room!" Wendy snapped at him.

"Aw, c'mon, Wendy, he's a little kid. Give him a break." Larry had a calmer approach. He shook his head. "We can't, Junior. Iggy's too out of it."

"I can hear you," Iggy growled, lifting his head even though it looked like a huge effort. "This ain't fun for me, y'know!"

He stumbled away from the table with the paper Wendy gave him crumpled in his fist. Lemmy followed him upstairs. The door slammed.

Morton shot Wendy a sidelong look. She scowled back at him. Roy shook his head and took his plate away. Larry wiped up crumbs. Junior chewed on his ground meat. On the couch, Ludwig rubbed the inner corners of his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

Morton let out a loud, surprise fart that disrupted the awkward silence. Junior burst out laughing.

"Ugh!" Wendy shoved her chair back and stormed upstairs.

.o

The weird energy in the castle stayed from morning to afternoon. Iggy's seizure usurped everyone's plans to see Bowser together.

Junior decided to go by himself after lunch.

He stuffed his face and left the table without cleaning up. Nobody made him, and his dad wasn't there to tell him, so why bother? Everybody was occupied with Iggy anyway.

He skipped into the hallway and took the elevator.

Stevie startled when Junior walked out alone.

"Oh! Good afternoon, my tiny highness. How's Iggy?"

Junior shrugged. "Sleeping."

She nodded, offering her hand. "My sister has epilepsy. I understand."

"Iggy didn't sleep good last night and that always makes him have seizures." He took her hand without thinking. "Did you get your shell done?"

Stevie glanced backwards. There were flowers and lightning patterns painted on her shell. "Yes! Do you like it?"

"It's cool. What's going on? How come you're coming out here?"

"Oh, there's a surprise for you."

"Really?"

Neil poked his head out the door and grinned. "Ah, there's one!" He disappeared again.

The giant white curtain was drawn around the bed to shield it from view of the door. Usually, it wasn't pulled out like that.

Junior glanced at Stevie, who led him behind the curtain and up to the foot of the bed. They had Bowser in that weird semi-sitting position. White blankets covered his lap. The drainage tube was gone, replaced by a taped gauze square. Like always, his eyes were closed and he still had the ventilator tube sticking out of his mouth.

"Say hi," Stevie whispered.

"Hi, dad." Junior said.

Bowser opened his eyes. They lit up in recognition. He waved a floppy, sleepy wave.

"D-dad?" Junior's whole world stopped. "You're awake?"

Bowser blinked really slow, the same kind of blink he did when he hadn't been awake very long on an early morning. His eyes fluttered shut again after a moment.

"He can't talk because of the tube," Neil said. "He's been waking up for a couple days now, but this is the first time he's fully with us."

"So his lights are back on?"

"Most of 'em," Stevie patted his shell. "Go on over and talk to him."

"Okay but…but…" Junior rounded on them, fists clenched. "Nobody can watch!"

Neil and Stevie exchanged humorous looks. They bowed in unison and stepped outside the privacy curtain drawn halfway around the bed.

Once they went out of sight, Junior pushed the stool next to the bed and clambered on, planting himself squarely in Bowser's lap.

"Dad?" His lower jaw quivered. Tears blurred his vision and his whole body trembled from the effort of holding back. "Are you really awake?"

Bowser looked at him again. Opening his eyes and keeping them focused seemed like a great effort for him.

Junior placed his hands on his shoulders. They held each other's gaze for a long minute, with Bowser's eyelids fluttering half-shut.

But there was life in those eyes again, even though they were tired.

"You're n-not gonna laugh at me if I c-cry, are you?" He whispered, eyes welling over.

Bowser shook his head. Junior threw his arms around his neck and sobbed, his crying getting louder when he felt Bower's huge arms embrace him too.

"Daddy!" Junior hiccuped. All the emotions came out at once— the fear of Bowser's sudden absence, the not knowing anything, the awful moment he found him hooked up to all the machines and the relief of seeing him awake again.

Underneath him, Bowser's chest shook.

Junior hugged him tighter, still bawling his eyes out. "Are you— laughing— at me— anyway?"

Bowser nodded, grinning as much as he could with tape and a tube in the way. The arms wrapped around Junior tightened, one hand cupping the back of his head.

Junior clung to him and forgave being laughed at because his dad acted like his dad.

.o

Being extubated ranked high on Bowser's list of worst experiences ever. At Neil's go-ahead, he took a deep breath— that wasn't fun either, because it was like breathing through a straw— then he exhaled forcefully and felt every inch of that awful endotracheal tube being pulled out of his throat. He damn near threw up!

Elton held a towel under his chin while he coughed, gagged and spat. Every paroxysm aggravated his sore chest.

But he could breathe! Really, truly breathe!

"Don't try to talk." Elton wiped his mouth for him, "Your vocal cords are going to be inflamed after this. Whisper, okay?"

"Thanks, I hate it," Bowser croaked, accepting the offered plastic cup of water. He almost choked on that, too, since it had been ages since he used those muscles to swallow.

Neil poked nasal cannula prongs into his nose and draped oxygen tubing over his horns. "How does that feel, your majesty?"

Sneering, Bowser closed his eyes and let his head fall back onto the pillow. "Bad."

"My apologies, but it's necessary."

Bowser grumbled, because any kind of activity fatigued him beyond belief. Just being awake was tiring!

He thought of the glowing staircase and the beautiful colors it exuded. Did he dream it up during his coma? Or did he go to the Great Beyond?

Everything was impossibly difficult. Just scratching his nose or shifting positions in bed required help from nurses. He tried not to think too hard about them changing the absorbent vent bag catching all his piss and crap, because he kept doing that without feeling an urge. His only relief was seeing Elton turn a little green.

"It improves with time," Judy told him after a particularly smelly change.

Later that day, Ludwig came down with his portable keyboard and showed off the progress on his piano piece. He had a general melody laid down.

Bowser pushed his thoughts aside and fell asleep trying to listen.

.o

The first thing he ate was a bowl of mushy Meat Meal, a nutritious goop specifically for young baby Koopas and Koopas incapable of eating solid food.

Too thick to suck through a straw, yet liquidy enough to swallow without much chewing, the texture reminded Bowser of melting ice cream. This blend had a robust Cheep-Cheep flavor.

He struggled to get the spoon from the bowl to his mouth. More landed on the cloth napkin covering his chest than in his face.

Junior saw the growing disaster and picked up the spoon. "You have to eat if you want to get strong again."

"Jun—"

"Here, dad, it's the plane! It's gonna crash! Catch it or it'll blow up! Aaaaaaah!"

Bowser opened his mouth for the spoon. He couldn't stay mad when his littlest kid wanted to feel helpful, so he pushed his humiliated ego aside, ate every offered bite and acted like he never tasted anything better.

.o

Four days. Four. Days. That was how long it took to be able to sit up by himself on the edge of the bed.

Bowser wore a thick green robe since Neil wouldn't let him wear his shell, and he still felt embarrassingly naked.

"Well, pictures don't do your royal handsomeness justice," said a friendly tenor voice.

Bowser looked over at the curtain, his brow arched.

A slender yellow-shelled Koopa Paratroopa regarded him with a smile that bared his buck teeth. His dark eyes were friendly and teasing. He carried a sequined silver tote bag over his shoulder.

Sighing, Bowser braved the pain to rub sleep goop off the inner corners of his eyes. "And you are?"

"Freddie, your physical therapist." Freddie set his bag down, spread his feathered wings and performed a graceful twirl and bow. "I'm here to make your life hell in the name of improving you, your majesty."

"I don't have that much trouble moving my body parts." Bowser scrunched his nose. That was a lie and he knew it. "What are you supposed to do for me?"

Freddie never missed a beat. "My king, I'm here to help your brain reconnect to your body. You're through the worst of this, now you can focus on regaining your strength."

"Neil called you, didn't he?"

"Because he knows I'm the best." Freddie rustled his wings, which had subtle white beads threaded among the feathers. "Do you mind if I take your vitals, sire?"

Bowser gestured for Freddie to have at him and stared at the fake tree across the room while having his blood pressure taken.

"I didn't expect it to take so much out of me," he finally admitted as the cuff tightened around his upper arm and withdrew. "The fatigue is irritating. I can't live my life wanting to sleep all day."

"Oh, darling, tell me about it. It will get better, I promise." Freddie attached a thin plastic sleeve to a cylindrical probe. "Under the tongue, please."

Bowser placed the probe in his mouth and held it under his tongue. It stuck out like a tobacco pipe, the digital screen on the tip lighting up with info about his temperature, oxygen saturation and pulse rate.

"Pulse is good, SATs are good, temp looks good. We're good to go!" Freddie took the probe back and disposed of the sleeve. He unhooked Bowser's oxygen from the wall and connected it to the concentrator Judy set beside the bed. "First things first, your posture."

"What's wrong with it?"

"You're pushing your shoulders forward. Is it from pain?"

"Kinda."

"Hm, I see. Let's work with that. I'll give you an exercise you can do on your own."

"Sounds good. Show me."

"Right." Freddie turned to the side and did a fantastic imitation of Bowser's natural kyphotic posture, but held his shoulders exaggeratedly forward. "I want you to take your shoulders and…" He slowly rolled his shoulders back, "…roll them like this. Stop at any point if you feel pain."

Bowser sat up straighter and copying the motion. Pain stabbed him when he got his shoulders halfway back. He gasped, rubbing his sore chest.

"Ow! What's this supposed to do?"

"It stops your pectoral muscles from contracting inward. It's a common problem for Koopas after thoracic surgery." Freddie fluffed his wings and folded them against his shell. "Keep doing that exercise whenever you think about it. Before you know it, you'll be able to flex like you used to before surgery."

Bowser chuckled, curling his left arm to bulge his bicep. It showed through the sleeve of the green robe. "Heh at least my arms still look good."

Freddie side-eyed him, flashing a teasing little grin. "Careful, I might have to bite that."

Snorting, Bowser let his hand fall in his lap. "What next?"

"Ah, one moment. I'll get it."

Freddie pulled a walker out from behind the privacy curtain. It had a black metal frame and reddish-orange wheels. Next to him, it looked comically huge. The wheels on the front legs were bigger than his booted feet!

"Those are for old farts!" Bowser groaned.

"They're for people with mobility issues, which you currently have." Freddie strapped the concentrator to Bowser's back. He curled his fingers over the walker handles and eased it within reach. "Now, go slow. Ease yourself up."

Getting into a standing position proved no problem for Bowser. He grabbed onto the waist-high walker handles when a fresh wave of exhaustion washed over him. His robe had padding on the back that mimicked wearing his shell, but he still felt uncomfortably naked.

"Take a deep breath, your majesty." Freddie stepped back to gaze up at him. "Well, aren't you a big one?"

Bowser shot him a sidelong look. "Do you stroke everybody's egos like this?"

Freddie chuckled. "Yes, is it working?"

"Maybe."

Taking a deep breath, Bowser eased one in front of the other. "How far do I have to walk?"

"As far as you can. Don't be ashamed if you can't go far, you'll improve with time."

Bowser's foot encountered something warm. It spread to the other foot. Every time he stepped, he felt wet. He stopped walking and recoiled in horror at the trail he left on the floor.

"Did I just…?"

"It happens. Not to worry, it's nothing I haven't seen before."

"Freddie, I pissed myself!"

"Yes, you have perfectly functional kidneys."

Shame flushed Bowser's cheeks. He looked away.

Freddie cocked his head and spread his hands. "Your majesty, a little pee— er— a lot of pee— never killed anybody. Your body acclimated itself to handling that without your conscious signal."

"Is that why I didn't feel it?"

"Yes. Now stop worrying for the moment. The floor will get mopped and you'll be fine. Let's walk. We can figure out the rest after that."

Freddie snapped his fingers. "Judy, dear, code yellow."

Judy stood up from her computer station. "Whoops. I'll take care of it."

The only thing keeping it bearable was nobody laughed.

That day, Bowser only made it to the end of the room before pain and fatigue forced him back into bed. He expected recovery to be rough, but this felt beyond ridiculous.

Freddie talked his ear off about ways to deal with his bladder and bowels while helping him settle in.

"I'll be back tomorrow, sire," He poured him a glass of water from the bedside pitcher. "Drink up and rest."

"I'm going to chase you around this place when I get my shit together," Bowser rumbled sleepily, accepting the drink.

A bright smile flashed in Freddie's eyes. "I look forward to it, my king! Now, remember, try to use the commode once an hour. We can extend that to longer later on."

He bowed, flared his wings and departed.

Bowser forgot to set an alarm. He soaked the sheets in his sleep. Stevie had to clean him up and change his whole bed, which she did without complaint.

He made sure to set an alarm after that because the burning shame made forgetting too painful.

.o

The energy in the castle went beyond chaotic. Obnoxious, even, to the point that Junior hid in his room to avoid being a prank target. Getting awakened by having water dumped on him wasn't fun. At least it covered up another wet bed, and the maids changed his bedding without finding out. They put three fresh waterproof top sheets on for him.

Maybe they suspected, but Junior never saw them point or laugh at him.

Speaking of pranks…

Iggy caught Morton in the hall outside their bedrooms.

"Hey, Morton, watch this!" He said, tipping himself forward into a handstand.

"Yeah, so what?" Morton backflipped into a one-handed handstand. "I can do that!"

"Gotcha!" Iggy hopped upright, lifted his leg and farted in Morton's face.

"AUGH! You asshole!" Morton grabbed Iggy's head with his legs and flipped him off his feet. Their shell spikes screeched against the stone floor.

Iggy laughed too hard to fight back or resist getting sat on by his heavier brother. "HAHAHA— ow, OW! HAHA!"

"Bastard," Morton lightly punched him in the snout.

"Oof!"

Ludwig stomped out of his room to whack them both upside the head with his tail.

"Quit it! I can't concentrate with you two vibrating the floor!" But he never mastered vocal inflections, so his shouting lacked venom. He sounded the same as he would calling someone from across a room— it took a strong emotion to show up in his voice.

Lemmy leaned out his door long enough to throw a clear rubber ball at Ludwig, nailing him squarely in the side of the head.

Ludwig's hearing aid emitted a strange whine audible across the hall. He took it out, twiddled something on it and reinserted it. The baleful look he shot Lemmy could freeze the sun!

But Lemmy didn't see it because he chased after his runaway ball.

"HEY!" Ludwig used his roar to yell.

Iggy and Morton's roughhousing stopped. They gawked, wide-eyed, and dashed downstairs to get out of the crossfire.

Lemmy paid the roar no mind as he caught up to his ball.

Ludwig snatched him by his tail and held him upside down over his head.

"Ack!" Lemmy writhed, "Not the tail! Ludwig!"

"You almost broke the microphone off my hearing aid!" Ludwig signed one-handed in sharp, quick slashes punctuated by low growls.

"Oops!"

"'Oops' doesn't cover it. Mark my words, little brother," Ludwig jiggled him side to side while signing, "My first symphony isn't written yet, but when it is, there will be a part that startles you out of your seat. When that happens, you will remember me telling you this."

"Do it! I dare you!" Lemmy's signs were clumsy and awkward since he did it holding his ball, but they were all correct. He wiggled his feet as if using them as part of his signing. "I triple shell dare you!"

Triple shell dares were the ultimate dares! Nobody backed down from those without losing coolness points! There was nothing worse than looking uncool!

Ludwig smirked, set him on his feet and leaned in close. Out loud, he said, "Challenge accepted."

And the devious look in his eye proved he meant it.

The second Ludwig's door closed, Junior bolted past Lemmy and slipped into the kitchen to steal snacks from the fridge. Larry caught him and only agreed to not tattle if he got to share the spoils. He helped Junior pilfer a tray of chocolate brownies.

"You better leave some for us!" Wendy said when she walked in on them mid-heist.

"Roy made us do it!" Larry tried to hide the tray behind his shell.

"Did not!" Roy shouted from the living room. "Wendy, As The Shell Turns is on, don't you love this show?"

"Oh!" Wendy scampered away. "Turn it up, I wanna see if Rita crashes Zedd's wedding!"

"Wasn't she being mind-controlled by Ivan?" Roy scoffed.

"That was last month. Ivan got splattered with acidic ooze and died."

"Figures."

"Why do they call 'em soap operas?" Larry wondered, stuffing a brownie into his mouth.

"Dunno." Junior gobbled two, getting crumbs everywhere. "Maybe because they're stupid grownup shows and need to get washed off the TV?"

Larry laughed so hard he almost choked.

That night, Morton barged into Iggy's room after he went to bed, sat on his head and unleashed enough gas to power ten volcanoes. He always had stomach problems, so his farts smelled worse than Bowser's!

"I ate spicy beans just to make 'em stink more. Enjoy!" He yanked the covers over Iggy's head to trap him in the stench and walked back out with a fiendish grin.

Iggy spent most of that night gagging while Lemmy laughed at him.

"You got fart bombed!"

.o

Showers.

A simple, mindless task Bowser took for granted until he couldn't take one without help.

Just walking to it with the walker sapped all his energy. Elton, Judy and Stevie had to help him slide onto the perforated metal shower bench. He soaped and rinsed his vent himself, they did everything else.

Judy washed his hair. Stevie scrubbed his upper body and Elton cleaned his lower half. They worked quickly and efficiently, passing the huge mobile shower head between each other to rinse where needed.

Lifting his arms while Stevie scrubbed underneath sent shooting pains across his chest, like someone took a buzz saw to it.

"I saw that wince, sire. You'll get pain meds soon," Elton said.

Bowser clenched his teeth without attempting to make snarky comments or joke with them. All his strength went into holding himself in a sitting position. At least they had the water comfortably hot.

The medical ward tapped a different water source and used separate plumbing from the main castle as a safety measure. It had a faintly chemical scent and taste due to the rigorous sterilization it went through before it touched any spigots. Sometimes its cooling units went haywire, and cold showers were the worst.

Bowser wiped some water off his face when the spray stopped.

Drying commenced in the same manner as scrubbing. The towels were huge and depressingly gray colored, same as the shower tiles.

Judy combed his wet hair forward over his eyes to de-tangle it and swept it backwards in three swift swipes. Exactly how he did it himself.

Something about picking his head up to aid Elton in drying his neck sent white lines of agony searing straight down his torso.

"Get me a pain pill now," Bowser bared his teeth and wrinkled his forehead. "Somebody just—" He held his chest. "Pain pill, now!"

"I'll get it." Judy climbed off the shower bench. "Hold on, sire."

"What happened? My liege, talk to me." Elton gazed up at him behind his gold tinted sunglasses.

"Moved my head and it set it off. Damn!" Bowser slouched where he sat.

"Which of your kids are the strongest?" Stevie asked, draping her towel across his back.

"Ludwig, Morton and Roy."

Stevie hopped off the bench as Judy returned with a Percocet tablet and a large plastic water glass.

Bowser paid no attention to what went on around him while he downed the pill and gulped the water. All he wanted was for the enervating ache to stop.

Two sets of slapping footsteps came up the corridor to the shower room. Pink and red along with shades of brown crossed his peripheral vision.

What a sight he had to be— sick, sans his shell and miserable.

It could be worse. At least it's not Peach.

"Hey, dad, are you having trouble here?" Morton's voice boomed in the tiled space.

If that wasn't bad enough, Ludwig sidled through the door. He was the tallest, his limbs sleek and willowy, a contrast to his thicker, broad-shouldered younger brothers.

"I'm fine," Bowser grumbled. "Just…I can't get up. I'm wiped out and— damn it." He roared, "I hate this!"

Roy plodded through puddles to his side. Steam fogged his sunglasses.

"It's okay, dad. You're right, this shit sucks."

Ludwig glanced down at Elton, Judy and Stevie. "How can we help?"

Moments later, Bowser had a blue gait belt velcroed around his waist.

With Stevie's instructions, Bowser held onto crouching Ludwig's shoulders while Roy and Morton gripped the gait belt loops on either side of him.

"On three, you all move together." Stevie motioned for Elton and Judy to step out. "One, two, three!"

Ludwig stood up. Morton and Roy pulled on the gait belt.

Having help made standing up less draining.

The pain pill began to work, easing some of Bowser's misery. He instinctively stood more upright without his heavy shell, so he appeared to be a head taller than Ludwig and a full head and shoulders taller than Roy and Morton.

Together, they shuffled out of the shower room like a massive multi-legged, four-tailed mythical creature.

Elton brought the walker. Bowser's face heated up at having to use it in front of his kids. At the same time, he was so exhausted that his eyes wouldn't focus.

Ludwig moved out of the way. Bowser accepted the walker handles in his huge hands.

"We've got you," Roy's grip on the gait belt remained steadfast.

"You're doin' great, dad." Morton patted his back.

"Keep trying," Ludwig signed.

Bowser looked at each of them and saw no pity in their eyes, only determination. Good.

It took him so long to reach his bed that Judy had enough time to change the whole thing. Fresh pillows, clean waterproof sheets, chux pads and soft blankets waited for him.

"Slowly," Stevie whispered.

"Don't tell me what to do!" Bowser clenched his jaw and lunged a step. It shaved half a second off his trip. But, damn it, it felt better than trudging along!

At last, he collapsed on his side on the mattress, panting and sore.

Stevie helped him put on his nasal cannula. Morton unhooked the gait belt. Roy pulled up the covers. Ludwig dimmed the lights.

"Love ya, dad," Morton patted his shoulder.

Bowser never opened his eyes after laying down. Exhaustion plunged him into sleep within minutes.

.o

A new rule spread throughout the castle— nobody other than medical staff was allowed in the medical ward when Freddie came by. Bowser didn't want an audience. He wanted to focus on regaining his strength. If Junior or his siblings were visiting when Freddie came in, they respectfully left.

But Junior snuck in one time, just once, and hid in one of the side exam offices to peek through a slightly open door.

He watched his dad, who walked hunched over a walker, struggle into the hallway with Freddie's friendly encouragement.

"This is your chance to chase me down!" Freddie flitted past the door in a breezy flutter of feathers. "Come and get me!"

"You're asking for it, Freddie." Bowser blew a smoke stream at him instead of his fully powered flame. Kerosene scents wafted into the room where Junior hid.

The walker creaked. Feet plopped on the tiled floor. More smoke billowed through.

"Now, now, darling, fire breathing is cheating!" Freddie wagged a finger.

"You're supposed to cheat." Bowser huffed, his breathing loud and heavy.

"Not possible in therapy, unfortunately."

"Wanna bet?"

"Your majesty, look how far you've come."

"Heh, I can do better."

"That's the spirit! The show must go on!"

They passed near the exam room.

Junior flattened himself against the wall behind the door. The lights were off, but he didn't want to chance being spotted.

Elton came through the hallway, stopping once when he noticed Freddie. "Oh, it's the rocket man."

"Elton! You silly fool, you're on duty today?"

Feathers rustled as two sets of wings flapped. The way they looked at each other reminded Junior of how Black and Ludwig got all starry eyed.

Elton carried on his way, leaving Freddie in the hall with Bowser.

"Nobody told me you two were a nightmare together," Bowser huffed between breaths.

Freddie laughed uproariously while guiding him to rest against the wall. "Oh, Elton is trouble in every delicious way."

"Why the hell does he call you rocket man?"

"My dear…" Freddie's voice dropped low, "Give me a few minutes alone with him and I'll shoot him into space."

Bowser barked a laugh, and Junior wondered what was so funny about someone being thrown into the sky.

Freddie had Bowser rest at the end of the hall before making the return trip towards his bed.

Junior peeked out the door again. He watched his dad's shadow retreat and smiled with pride.

I have the toughest dad in the world!

.o

Junior fastened himself to Bowser's lap and wouldn't budge for the whole day. Bowser had to eat and drink around him. They allowed him soft solid food now, like ash pancakes and scrambled eggs. Feeling his jaw and throat move when he ate, feeling his chest rise and fall, and hearing him slurp, gulp, breathe and burp after seeing him motionless for so long felt incredible.

"Clingy little guy, isn't he?" Celine remarked. "He's got you in a death grip."

"Can you blame him?"

"Not at all. Are you done with that?"

"Mmhmm." Bowser pushed the food tray towards her.

The deep rumble whenever he talked was the best sound of all. His voice was scratchy and thin for three days after Neil took the tube out of his mouth, but now it sounded back to normal.

The hand he used to move the tray cupped the back of Junior's head.

There weren't any machines connected to him anymore. The heart monitor screen was shut off most of the time, though he still had the white leads on his chest. No more oxygen tubing taped across his nose and no IVs tying him to liquid in bags.

Junior jumped at the chance to help Bowser put his spiked bands and choker back on. They had magnetic clasps and a buckle to ensure they stayed secure.

"Someday, you'll be big enough to wear these," Bowser remarked off-handedly.

"How long? A million years?" Junior made a face.

"If I could bottle you up in time, yeah."

"That's a lot!"

"It won't feel like long when you're older." Bowser slid off the bed to reach for his spiked shell.

Junior had to get off his lap again, but he didn't mind. "Celine said you're not supposed to have that."

"She isn't my boss." He winced as he shrugged into the shell, letting it suction to his back with a quiet puff of air.

"Ooh, ow!" His hand went to his chest. "Oof! Heh, wow, I felt my sternum move!"

"Dad?"

"I'm fine." He grinned, one eye screwed shut. "Pain means I'm alive. It's not as bad as it was before."

Wearing his shell caused Bowser to assume his natural hunched posture. He shifted onto the bed again, resting his head on the pillows piled there instead of folding his hands under his chin. It seemed the slightest activities tired him out.

"Hey, dad?" Junior tapped his index finger claws together.

"Hm?"

"Did…did having a heart attack hurt?"

Bowser sniffed, closing his eyes. "Yes, it did. A lot."

"Was it something I did?"

"Wha— no! What gave you that idea?"

"You felt bad and I didn't know! I dragged you out to race Karts!"

"Junior, I was having that heart attack for a week before it knocked me out. I didn't know what was wrong with me until right before we went outside. You didn't do anything. My body made a mistake, that's it."

"I don't think I want to race Karts for a while."

"Do whatever you want."

"I laughed when you fell." He wiped his eyes. "I thought you were playing."

"Junior, look at me."

Junior met Bowser's eyes. Bowser gave him his best serious face. It was kind of cool how he could do it while laying down.

"I didn't let you know anything was wrong. Not any bit of what happened to me is your fault. You saved my life running off to get Roy. It's over. Okay? Junior? Okay?"

"Okay…okay…good."

"Great!" Bowser pointed to the papers Junior put on the stool by the bed. "Now what's all that?"

Junior got startled out of his self-blame by the question. He beamed, spreading all his drawings across the floor and explaining each one.

Bowser dozed off halfway through the presentation. Junior didn't notice until he turned to show him his scribbles of Celine checking his ventilator tube.

Rather than be offended, he smiled because everything was getting better.

.o

Freddie gaped from the doorway. Then he beamed, throwing his wings open as he performed a sweeping bow. "Your highness, you've donned your shell and royal collar!"

Bowser grinned back, all sharp teeth and hard eyes. "Freddie, take me on some stairs. I'm ready."

He left the walker behind because he wanted to try walking without it. This was the last hurdle he had to cross. If he managed this, he could return upstairs to his own home again.

Stairs, as it turned out, were exhausting. He went up and came down the mock stairway set up for this kind of therapy.

Fatigue still plagued him, but he had enough. He wanted to go back to sleeping in his own bed.

.o

Junior heard Bowser's bass voice booming all the way from the elevator.

"You're not wheeling me out like a geriatric old fart. No. I'm walking!"

"Your Spikeyness, please reconsider!"

"No, Neil. You fixed me up. I walked the whole floor. Freddie got me going up and down stairs. I'm eating, crapping and breathing. That's good enough."

"Your shell—"

"No. It stays. That's final!"

"My king, pl—"

"Look! Neil, I appreciate your concern, okay? I'm not gonna stretch my arms over my head or try to pick up anything heavier than twenty pounds. It takes three weeks for Koopa bones to heal, and I was here for two and a half of those. I can handle it."

Bowser emerged into the long corridor with a parade of worrying nurses trailing alongside. Junior grinned at him and held the elevator open long enough for him to walk in. Bowser hit the door close button, causing the doors to swoop shut on the MediKoopas.

"Finally!" He sighed, leaning on the wall.

"They looked mad." Junior hopped from foot to foot.

"Too bad." Bowser scoffed. "Here." He tossed Junior a plastic bag. "That's all my medicine."

The bag that seemed tiny next to Bowser was almost as big as Junior's head!

"Oof! There's a lot!"

Bowser pushed the up arrow and the elevator zoomed into motion. "It's a bunch of the same thing."

"What kind of medicine?"

"Uh, stuff for pain, and stuff to, uh, thin my blood so it doesn't clog up my heart again. And— wait, Junior? Who's been doing your hair?"

Junior reached up to rub his little reddish-orange topknot ponytail. It felt weirder than usual. "Wendy did it this morning. Why?"

Bowser laughed, slapping his knee. "She curled it!"

"AAH! No way!"

"Ow, laughing hurts, but…BWAHAHA! Your hair! You poor kid! HAHAHA!"

The doors opened while Junior tugged on his topknot in a vain attempt to uncurl it. He fobbed the bag of medicine off onto Ludwig since he waited eagerly outside the door.

"Oh, you walked out?"

"Whaddya take me for? An old guy?" Bowser said between snickers. "I'm fine. I'm hungry, I hope there's actual food out there. They only gave me slop downstairs."

Ludwig's awkward smile unfolded, baring his huge front tooth. "We had the cooks prepare your favorite."

Neil came up the elevator to lodge one more protest. A fireball from Bowser sent him scurrying back through the metal doors.

Junior ran ahead to soak his head under the kitchen sink faucet, which undid the curl Wendy put in his hair. He pilfered the pepper container, rushed upstairs into his sister's very, very pink room, and poured it on her pillow.

"Gotcha, barfhead," he whispered.

Nobody noticed him slipping past to put the pepper container back in the kitchen. They were all focused on getting Bowser seated at the head of the table and serving him the biggest Cheep-Cheep kabobs known to Koopa-kind.

"Finally! Real food!" Bowser's eyes glinted when he saw the plate. Spit ran off one of his front teeth. He wiggled his fingers, snatched up the first stick and tore into it. "Mm, so good, mmh! Who made these?"

"Everybody." Wendy leaned around the chair to kiss his cheek. "We really missed you, daddy."

Bowser belched and grinned. "You kids are a menace."

"Menace!" Lemmy bounced his ball too high, and it landed squarely in the bowl of tardar sauce. The splatter was a spectacular circle that managed to hit every single person in the room.

Roy had to take his sunglasses off to lick them clean. He squinted his beady black eyes at the ball in the bowl.

Wendy saved all but a spot on her forehead from taking a hit.

Iggy snickered, slurping a glob off his forearm. "Nice one, Lemmy."

Larry brushed some out of his hair.

Morton managed to catch it in his mouth.

Ludwig scraped it off the side of his face and wrinkled his nose. He was the odd one out who didn't like tardar sauce. "Eugh!"

Junior felt it dripping off his chest.

Bowser got the worst of it all over his entire face.

"Oops!" Lemmy reached his goopy hands into the bowl and retrieved his ball.

It slipped out of his grip, causing a second splatter even worse than the first.

That broke it. Everybody cracked up and started eating their kabobs.

Later, Bowser came upstairs to tuck Junior into bed. The past two weeks were utter chaos, but Junior missed this the most. This felt normal.

"You gotta be tired, too," he said, curling up on his stomach.

"Yeah. Big day." Bowser sat on the floor instead of risking the tiny chair. "Which one am I reading tonight?"

Junior wagged his tail. "The one with the pipes!"

Books rustled around on the shelf. The glossy cardboard cover creaked open. Bowser's soothing voice rolled off on a story about Peter Piranha eating his way through all the pipes in the world and letting out a big burp at the end. He made up silly voices every time the characters talked to each other.

Junior pretended he fell asleep to hear the entire spectrum of his dad's funny voices. He wished it could go on forever, but the story ended like all stories eventually do.

The book slid onto the shelf and then came a grunt as Bowser heaved himself onto his feet.

"Heh, you're sleepin' and not gonna hear this, but…" He sighed, never speaking louder than a whisper. "The worst part of this happening was almost missing you growing up. I'm gonna be gone someday, but I'm not going anywhere 'til I know you'll be okay."

Warm breath grazed Junior's cheek a moment before a kiss dampened the side of his head. Large fingers stroked his topknot backwards off his forehead.

"I love you, kid, more than you'll ever know."

He withdrew. His footsteps padded away. The door swished open and shut.

Junior didn't know why his dad talked to somebody he thought was asleep, but his heart swelled at those words and he silently swore to remember them for the rest of his life.

"Junior's been a nightmare," Roy grumbled in the hall.

"He's still little. They take it hard," Bowser said back. "Look, I'm gonna head up to bed. I'm wiped out."

Roy's feet scuffed across the floor, his tail scraping outside Junior's door. "Hey, um…"

"What?"

"I saw it. When they were working on you." Roy's voice cracked, "I thought I was watching you die. That was hard. I know it's sappy, but…hug?"

Bowser's feet crossed past Junior's door. Roy let out a sniffly, muffled sob.

"It's okay now," said Bowser while Roy cried into his chest. He didn't tease him about crying. Instead, he went on, "We got through it and we're all here. That counts for something, right?"

"Y-yeah." Roy exhaled shakily. "Sometimes there's stuff you wish you could un-see."

"Heh, I get it. Now I need some sleep. I'm dozing off while I'm standing here."

"Sure, sure!" Roy sniffled. "Just gotta clean myself up. G'night, dad. Glad you're back with us."

Their footsteps departed in opposite directions.

Junior curled up under his blankets. Slumber had almost claimed him when Wendy's distant sneeze reached his ears.

She wailed, "Who put pepper on my pillow?"

Lemmy's door opened. "Barfhead!"

"Lemmy? You little sh—"

"HEY!" Bowser boomed, "Pipe down and go to bed!"

Two doors thudded shut and the castle quieted down.

.o

The next morning, Junior rode the elevator down to the medical ward full of bad memories. He was hungry because Bowser told him he couldn't eat until after they visited here.

"Why are we going there again?"

Bowser looked down, his expression neutral. "You're getting tests on your heart."

"Why?"

"They wanna look at it."

"What are they gonna do?"

"One is an echocardiogram. The other is an angiogram. The other kids are getting it, too, but you're first."

Their discussion stopped there.

It ended up being a weird morning.

Junior's eyelids drooped. His dad told him to drink medicine from a little cup instead of eating breakfast. The lemon flavored goop tasted okay. Now he was sleepy.

He fell asleep on the table in the exam room before Neil came in, so he missed the whole echocardiogram. It sounded boring, so he wasn't too upset.

Bowser woke him up to take his shell off and put on a soft robe instead.

Judy rubbed a cold alcohol wipe on the bottom of his tail.

"Okay, time for the poke. You ready?"

Junior's grogginess abated just in time to see the size of the needle.

"No…no, no!" Tears blurred his eyes.

Bowser wrapped his huge arm around him. "It'll be okay. I had a lot of these while I was here."

"But you were— OW! AAAHAAAH! OW!" Junior screamed as sharp pain jabbed up his tail. He kicked his feet and twisted to hide his face against Bowser's chest.

"There! All done!" Judy taped the IV catheter in place and stroked his hand. "You're okay, see? It's in!"

"Daddy!" Junior whined. The contraption on his tail looked horrible because it was stuck in him!

Bowser chuckled and rubbed his back. That felt weird without his shell. "You're tougher than you think you are."

Junior sniffled, trying to keep himself from crying more. "Is that how I get more sleepy stuff?"

"Mmhmm!" Judy smiled, patting his head. "It's purple, so you'll know when we do it."

She took a gold star sticker out of her pocket and stuck it onto the back of his hand. "Here, this sticker is magic, it'll make you super-ultra-mega brave."

He stopped sniffling and wiped the snot off his nose. That sticker was cool and huge, it covered the whole back of his hand.

"Can dad have one too?"

"If he wants one."

"Sure," Bowser put his hand out to accept a glittery blue star sticker. It barely covered his knuckle.

The rest of the morning was a blur. Junior watched Judy inject the purple goo. In a few minutes he was so sleepy that he didn't want to move or open his eyes.

He recalled being wheeled through a long, dim corridor into a room with a giant C-shaped machine at the far end. Something cold got smeared all over his tail again, and then came another needle poke. That one didn't hurt too bad, but he still hated it!

"Ow! Ow!"

"Sorry about all the needles," Judy said softly. She had a bright overhead light aimed at his tail and she wore a bunch of stuff that covered most of her body. "Can you feel this?"

"I see you doing it." Junior pointed at the mirrored ceiling, "I don't feel anything."

"Okay, that's good!" She covered him with gray cloth drapes from neck to tail with a small opening exposing where he was numb. "Close your eyes for me? There. Now, let's count to ten together, okay?"

"One, two…" Junior noticed a pinch in his tail.

Judy counted with him. Her hands moved around and tape scraped off a roll, but nothing hurt.

"…eight, nine, ten, there we go!"

"What did you do?"

"I put in the tube Neil is going to stick his instruments through. It's in your artery."

"Oh…" Junior giggled groggily, "That's okay then, 'cuz it didn't hurt that time. Is it because of your sticker?"

She laughed, "I wish."

Somebody moved a big, square-shaped tower-looking thing over his chest.

More people came in draped in green medical stuff and crinkly robes. They all looked like aliens!

Judy covered Junior's hair with a papery shower cap, same as everyone else wore on their heads.

Neil appeared next, all smiles and chatter. He had on the same weird gear. Everybody did a lot of checking in with each other before the procedure began.

Junior felt unpleasant pressure in his chest and arms.

"Can I sleep?" He mumbled.

"Pigtail catheter is in. Advancing." Neil caught what he said and answered, "Yep! If you want to."

And then Junior slept.

He knew he was cradled in Bowser's arms when he drifted towards being awake. His tongue and throat hurt and tasted bad from being dry.

Neil talked to Bowser in a hushed voice, "…tested positive for the Crash defect."

"What does that mean for him?" Bowser asked.

"We won't know the severity of it until he begins adolescence. You have a fourth degree narrowing, the most severe. He may grow up to be less severe than that. It won't pose a problem for him at all while he's young."

Neil squeaked his stool. "Most Koopas don't know they have this defect until it causes a heart attack, like it did for you. You're extremely lucky you had someone nearby to call for help. First heart attacks with Crash are usually fatal."

"Will he live a full life?"

At that, Neil's tone lightened. "Of course! As long as he gets regular checkups as he goes into adolescence. We can place special medicated stents that encourage the vessels to expand more to a normal size as they grow if it turns out he has it as severe as you. They're longer than the ones you think of when I say 'stent', and they dissolve in the body over several years. Heart attacks in the smaller vessels may still be possible, but stents greatly reduce the chances of a fatal one."

The tension in Bowser's arms relaxed away. He breathed out, his chest heaving up and down like a worry left him. "That's good. Real good."

"I'm thirsty," Junior mumbled, licking at his dry mouth.

"Well, hello! Welcome back." Neil patted his shoulder. "You can have a drink when you wake up more."

"I wanna see my banjogram pictures. Judy said I'll get to see 'em."

A silly grin split Bowser's face. "Show him the angiogram, Neil."

That day, Junior saw how the blood vessels on his heart looked like vines without leaves.

.o

Bowser sat comfortably in his throne, sipping cactus tea from his orange DAD IS THE BOSS mug while Boom-Boom knelt over a large medical dummy shaped like a Koopa. Its head had red, yellow and green LEDs where a face would normally be, and its insides contained viscous fluid that mimicked blood.

Boom-Boom spoke and signed as he described the steps to performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Ludwig, Lemmy, Iggy, Roy, Wendy, Morton, Larry and Junior watched him do it on the green dummy.

Every time Boom-Boom pushed on its chest, it emitted a sickening click. The red light lit, followed by the yellow, and finally the green light came on and brightened the longer he did compressions. They dimmed and went out as soon as he stopped.

"It'll sound like this if you're doing it right. You want a steady, bright green light, that means the blood is circulating. Who's first?"

"Me!" Junior raised his hand.

He was too small to depress the dummy's chest far enough. Not even the red light came on. Boom-Boom did it with him, to show him how it should feel.

"What if I ground pound on his chest over and over?" Junior lamented his small size.

Boom-Boom chuckled, flashing his huge, sharp teeth. "I don't think that'll work. You can't do it fast enough over and over."

Lemmy couldn't push far enough either despite his best efforts. Boom-Boom had him do compressions with Junior, and their combined strength achieved the desired lights and clicking.

"This is how Koopa Troopas did it on your dad. Sometimes teamwork is the key."

Junior and Lemmy kept at it until they fell out of rhythm with each other. They knocked heads. Both grabbed their brand new goose-egg bumps and collapsed in laughter.

Morton tried next, followed by Roy. Morton worked up a sweat, and Bowser couldn't help noticing the haunted faraway look in his eyes afterward.

"Man, it's hard!" Roy adjusted his sunglasses between compressions. The lights fell to yellow.

"Yeah." Morton turned away from everyone, his wide mouth pulled in a sneer. "I hope I never have to do that."

"Roy, you're gonna lose perfusion if you keep stopping like that." Boom-Boom's correction was gentle, but firm. "The initial compressions build up the pressure that pumps blood around the body. Every time you stop, the pressure drops and the brain loses perfusion. Let the sunglasses fall off."

Nodding, Roy gritted his teeth and ignored his sunglasses sliding off on his next attempt. He kept the green light on that time.

Wendy's eyes teared up when she crouched by the dummy. She looked up at Bowser.

"Go on, sweetie," Bowser leaned forward.

Nodding, she positioned her hands. Boom-Boom shifted her arms straighter.

"Remember, go fast," he said.

Wendy clenched her jaw and made that dummy click. She watched the lights flicker until the green one shone steadily. "Feels like— I'm going to— break bones."

Boom-Boom nodded. "Sometimes, you do. Broken ribs are survivable. They won't feel it happening. Keep going."

She did it until sweat coated her face. Like Morton, she walked off with her back to everybody and didn't say another word. Morton joined her and they exchanged inaudible whispers.

"Uhh…" Iggy crouched by the dummy and scratched his head. "What's the first step again?"

"Hand under the armpit." Boom-Boom showed him where to place his palm and slide it towards the center. "Koopas of all sizes have a little depression over the heart. That's where you want your palm to land."

"Right! Got it."

Iggy went too fast on the compressions, which caused a stuttering green light, and Boom-Boom had to slow him down a few beats per minute.

Ludwig kept looking up at Boom-Boom for reassurance, so Boom-Boom knelt across from him and signed the instructions again. He nodded, positioned his hands for a few test compressions and laid into it. Once he figured out the rhythm, he did an excellent job.

But Larry's performance was so technically perfect it blew everyone else away. He stayed the calmest and lasted the longest before signs of fatigue appeared.

Bowser smiled proudly and downed his cactus tea.

.o

Finally, his kids were all done having their hearts examined. It wasn't easy watching them endure echocardiograms or angiograms, but Bowser was glad he insisted they get checked.

Iggy, Lemmy and Morton were the only ones besides Junior who tested positive for Crash.

Bowser left Larry's bedroom and headed upstairs to his own.

Crash was the colloquial and easier to remember name for Restrictive Coronary Artery Hypoplasia and Sclerosis.

As Koopas grew, their hearts were supposed to grow in proportion with their bodies, with the coronary arteries widening in circumference to their adult size just before puberty. This prepared a Koopa's heart for their adolescent growth spurt.

Crash hearts grew irregularly at different rates— Neil spotted Junior's Crash by his huge mitral valve and oversized left ventricle. "Looks like this one is winning the growth race. Don't worry, the rest will catch up. His ejection fraction is beautiful. Look at that!"

After a certain point the coronary arteries inexplicably stopped growing too soon during the growth spurt, or, in fourth degree narrowing, failed to start at all. This posed no problem for young Koopas because their flexible arteries adjusted well to more blood volume going through.

But Koopas later in life— somewhere in their late thirties and early forties— developed sclerosis that kept those arteries from flexing like they needed to. They didn't have as much room for plaque buildup, so blockages became inevitable.

Hearts were smart organs, they proliferated new blood vessels over starving areas of myocardium constantly as a natural bypass. The process took two days, but it couldn't compensate for plaques breaking off to occlude an artery. Undiagnosed, untreated Koopas with third and fourth degree Crash inevitably died of catastrophic heart attacks because of this.

Fortunately, Koopas diagnosed young had a better chance of a full life. Stents could be placed in Koopas with third or fourth degree narrowing that stretched their major coronary arteries wider, either to encourage them to grow bigger at the beginning of the growth spurt so they ended up close to a normal size, or to give them a wider aperture if discovered during or after the growth spurt. Stretching wasn't possible once sclerosis began because the arteries lost most of their elasticity. It was attempted in the past and led to intimal tears, aneurysms and ruptures.

Bowser sighed, rubbing his fingertip across the roughness of his surgical scar. Medication, angioplasties and bypass surgeries were the only solution for Crash discovered late in life. His heart would break down on him eventually, he made peace with that inevitability, but he took measures to ensure his kids wouldn't suffer the same. As a dad, it was his job to protect their hearts.

Morton showed fourth degree Crash that threatened his life. He had an angioplasty to flatten out the plaques already present and permanent stretching stents placed in all his major coronary arteries the same day. The stents came coated in something that encouraged blood vessel proliferation. More arteries meant more avenues for his body to divert blood flow in case of blockages. He said the only part that hurt was the stents opening.

The drugs intended to help him relax made him so sick he painted his recovery room with projectile vomit. Antiemetics were the only thing that stopped it.

Bowser took a photo of the mess because he was so astonished at how thoroughly Morton puked on everything, even the ceiling!

Morton laughed at it once he recovered enough to be coherent. "I invented a new shade of green!"

"That's why we tell you not to eat after midnight. You're lucky you didn't aspirate." Celine didn't find it amusing when she had to clean it up. But she had an iron stomach and never flinched once. Bowser helped by sponging the bacon chunks off the ceiling so she didn't have to climb a ladder.

Iggy and Lemmy came up with first degree Crash, the least severe. Neil pointed out how squiggly their coronary arteries looked on the faint shadows of their hearts, a common finding in mild cases. They didn't need to worry about anything other than sclerosis later in life. That could be managed with blood pressure medication if it became necessary.

Bowser sat with Lemmy because he didn't have a good time getting an echocardiogram or angiogram. He understood what the tests were for, and he tried his absolute best to be a trooper and cooperate, but his nervous system reacted badly. Both procedures triggered violent meltdowns, so much that asked to be knocked out with meds to finish the necessary tests. Then he woke up and resumed melting down, and the only things that soothed him were strong pain meds, his ear defenders and his weighted blanket.

He couldn't stand being touched or engaging in social interaction. Just seeing peoples' faces set him off.

Bowser gave him his finger to hold onto. He made sure Josh kept conservation with Lemmy minimal and put back anything he disturbed in the room while taking vitals.

Lemmy bounced back once he was released to go upstairs. Bowser had to stop him from doing handstands on his favorite yellow and orange starry ball because his tail still hadn't healed yet from the arterial stick.

Iggy had the worst time getting his angiogram. He went into a focal dyscognitive seizure at the end of the procedure. Tachycardia preceded them, and he stated that he felt his heart racing. That wasn't good when he had a punctured artery. Neil worked fast to finish up before the seizure fully hit. Elton applied a pressure bandage once it became clear Iggy couldn't follow directions anymore. Judy placed an oxygen mask over his snout and somehow stuck an oxygen saturation monitor sticker into his ear hole without getting clawed.

Iggy was sitting up on the gurney when Neil brought him out of the cath lab. He screamed shrilly and twisted to look over his left shoulder. Bowser knew what that meant. He rushed over as Iggy's whole body stiffened on the gurney.

Neil positioned Iggy his side, turned up his oxygen and checked his watch. Bowser tucked a pillow behind his unshelled back to protect his spine from the raised bed rails while his trembling transitioned into thrashing. His SATs dropped into the eighties, which was scary. The tonic clonic seizure lasted less than a minute, and thankfully his SATs rose to the upper nineties immediately after. His eyes stayed rolled back and his chest heaved with loud, stertorous gasps.

Neil calmly pushed the gurney into recovery where Elton took over monitoring vitals. Judy smartly prepped a clean bed because Iggy soiled the gurney. Bowser helped them transfer him to the clean bed, opened his phone and logged the seizure in his tracking app. He kissed his cheek and moved the oxygen mask long enough to clean up the bloody spit pooling around his snout. It was never easy to watch him go through that.

"Oh, his tongue," Elton pointed out.

"I know." Bowser wiped the inside of the oxygen mask with paper towels as Iggy started to swallow his spit again. He would be mobile soon.

"Get ready, Elton. He's mean when he's postictal."

That day was no exception. Elton stepped back. Bowser bore the brunt of Iggy's confused flailing while keeping him from climbing off the bed. It took an hour for him to stop screaming anytime Elton checked his vitals. He didn't remember any of that day once he woke up from his recovery nap. Bowser knew he was present again when he asked for his glasses. His main complaints after the whole ordeal were sore muscles, tail pain and not being able to eat solid food for a week.

Ludwig turned out to be allergic to the dye they injected, so they pumped him full of antihistamines that made him loopy, and he itched miserably for two days. At least his results were negative and he didn't have to endure more angiograms in the future. Still, watching him sign nonsense as he exited the cath lab was amusing. Bowser took a video of that on his phone. Ludwig found it funny once he stopped itching.

Larry's caudal artery was unusually deep and close to the nerves supplying his tail, so Judy went for his wrist after three tail pokes failed. No Crash, but he developed a nasty, agonizing fist-sized hematoma on his tail that required minor surgery to drain the trapped blood. Bowser sat with him and held his hand through all of it, and he never told anybody he saw him cry from being in pain.

Roy and Wendy went in and came out the easiest, no drama or complications and with negative results.

Wendy recorded a video of her echo while Neil did it, and wanted selfies with the tablet containing pictures of her angio behind her. She proudly posted it to her ClawBook page on the condition that she didn't mention who else tested positive or negative.

Neil discovered Roy had two left anterior descending coronary arteries that branched off in opposite directions like mirror images of each other. Roy looked at his results and went back to sleep for another hour. His only complaint was the room being cold.

Bowser took photos on his of his hand holding each of his kids' hands after their angios. He put them together into a collage and posted it to his ClawBook with the caption, Your kids never get too old for this.

Wendy replied later, Love you, too, daddy.

He opened the drawer on his nightstand where he kept a list of who tested positive for Crash and who didn't. Drama aside, his kids were going to be okay. The older ones who came up positive prepared accordingly.

Junior remained a wait and see case; Neil wouldn't know the severity of his Crash until he approached puberty.

Neil told Bowser he didn't have to worry about it now. Bowser worried anyway because that was what dads did.

.o

"Dad! Don't give me away!" Junior hissed from his hiding place in the Koopa Clown Car.

Bowser almost stepped on him getting in. He jumped back out. "Gah! What's up?"

"Hide n' seek! Roy is it!"

"Oh. Heh! How about you hide really good by coming with me?"

"Isn't that cheating?"

"Yup," Bowser grinned, flashing his sharp teeth. "But you're supposed to cheat at games like this."

"Cool!" Junior moved aside, giving his dad room to slide in without squishing him. "Where are we going? And why do you have flowers?"

"Um, to, um…" Bowser slapped the bouquet of thornless pink roses into the mesh holder under the control stick. A red ribbon held the stems together. "We're gonna menace some fungus!"

His hair looked neater than usual, like he put that gel stuff in it.

The Koopa Clown Car engine rumbled to life before Junior could ponder it more. He giggled as it rose above the volcano rim, leaving the gloomy castle behind like a memory. Whatever his dad put in his hair kept it from moving much in the wind.

"We're clear, you can pop up now," Bowser said, keeping his hands wrapped around the control stick.

Junior clambered up onto the top of Bowser's shell to watch the sooty Darklands landscape give way to icy mountains, then a forest running through a steep valley, and finally the pink spires of the Mushroom Kingdom castle.

"Okay, get down here. This might get wild." Bowser pointed towards his feet.

Junior climbed down to stand between his dad's feet, so only his beady little eyes poked above the green rim of the Koopa Clown Car.

His dad was so big and scary that the people on the ground outside the castle started screaming and fleeing to hide. One dark haired girl crouched behind a rectangular pot of yellow tulips.

"It's Bowser!" Someone bellowed.

"I thought he died," shouted somebody else.

Bowser pushed the Clown Car into a steep dive, buzzed the water of the moat and circled up again towards the tower with two pink potted plants framing the shuttered window.

He guffawed, stopped the car beside the balcony and unleashed an arc of flame from his jaws that scorched a few empty flower pots on the ground.

"BWAHAHA! As you all can see, rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated!" Gray smoke curled around his mouth as he spoke. "Run, you little dickheads! BWAHAHA!"

Junior puffed out his own fireball to help his dad scare them more. "Yeah! Wimps!"

People below continued fleeing until the courtyard cleared.

The tower windows swung open. Peach stuck her head out, sans her usual gold crown. All she wore was a white robe and fluffy pink slippers.

"Really, Bowser? Really?" She glared.

Junior watched Bowser's whole face change. His eyes got a silly, dreamy look and he smiled in a way that wasn't mean.

"Good morning, gorgeous," he said waggling his eyebrows up and down. "Relieved to see me alive?"

"Hi, mama Peach!" Junior waved.

"Hi, Junior." Peach waved back. She closed her eyes and sighed, pinching her nose between thumb and forefinger, and refocused on Bowser. "I'm glad you aren't dead. That doesn't mean I'm relieved to see you."

Bowser chuckled, circling the tower again. As he came around the right side, he snatched up the flowers he brought and tossed them to her.

Peach caught the bouquet. It looked like a reflex, because she dropped it a second later and looked up, scowling.

"There's still time to dump that sewer scoundrel!" Bowser said.

She stopped scowling and giggled, shaking her head. "Nope!"

Something moved in the shadows behind her.

"In that case…" Bowser zoomed straight at the tower, "I'll just take ya!"

Fireballs blasted past Peach to singe his nostrils. He sneezed. While he sneezed, Mario burst out the window to land on the Koopa Clown Car.

"Leave-a my wife-a alone!" He shouted, his clothes glowing with the power of a Fire Flower.

"Ack! Get off me, bilge brains!" Bowser grabbed Mario's overalls.

Mario kicked his feet. His foot hit the Koopa Clown Car control stick. The cup-shaped aircraft tilted.

One second, Junior was standing between his dad's feet and the next, the sun streaked across his visual field. All he could do was flail to twist himself upright.

He hit something feet first, breaking a pot and his middle toe claw in half. Pain toppled him forward into a bunch of yellow tulips.

"Ow! Shit! Ow!" Junior rolled around, holding his bleeding toe. Tears pricked in his eyes. "Owww!"

He sat up, sniffling and covered in soil, and came face to face with the girl who crouched there.

This weird person had messy dark brown pigtails laying on her shoulders, large blue eyes exactly like Mario and a pointy nose that seemed too big for her face. Freckles dusted her cheeks. She wore a red T-shirt, blue denim overalls and brown sandals. Her feet were dirty like she took her sandals off to play and put them back on to avoid getting caught. Bright pink bandaids clung to both her knees.

Like most of the human-looking people, she was smaller than him.

"Cherry! No!" Mario shouted down. "Get away from him!"

"Shut up!" Bowser snarled. "Junior, are you okay?"

Junior looked up and shrugged, because he didn't know yet.

"Cherry!" Peach hollered.

"Are you okay?" The girl asked.

"M'fine," Junior sniffled, still clutching his foot. A lie, he wasn't fine, his foot hurt!

The girl— Cherry— ran over to him. She yanked the bandaid off her left knee, wrapped it around his bleeding toe and pulled it tight to bring the ragged edges together.

Junior wiped his face and sniffled. Cherry kept looking at him with those big, blue eyes.

"I never saw a Koopa up close before," she remarked, half-smiling.

Above them, Bowser managed to ward Mario off the Koopa Clown Car.

"Junior, let's go!" He unfurled the emergency rope ladder.

Junior looked Cherry up and down, and blurted, "You're pretty for a shrimp!"

He grabbed the ladder, letting his dad carry him away.

Mario jumped from balcony to balcony until he landed next to Cherry. He scooped her up in a hug and shook his fist at the retreating Koopa Clown Car.

Cherry watched Junior, and he watched her until she became just a speck of a person among more people. Then he climbed up the ladder.

Bowser had a bump above his right eye. Singe marks marred his snout. He breathed hard like he ran, but he grinned. A real grin, not the scared one from right before his heart stopped.

"Are you okay, dad?" Junior huffed.

"I feel great! Just a little tired." Bowser winked an eye shut. "Hey, Junior? Milestone moment. You talked to a girl."

"She looks weird!" Junior eyed the pink bandaid holding his toe claw together. "You didn't tell me girls look weird!"

"They're supposed to look weird! Heh, guess I'll have to hose you down when we get home, huh? You've got flowers stuck to you."

"Aw, dad!"

Bowser laughed, and Junior pouted the rest of the way home.

The bandaid fell off during the bath, but the blood caught underneath created a scab that glued his broken toe claw together. Bowser wrapped it in white tape designed for broken Koopa claws to keep it from breaking open again.

.o

The next morning, Junior gazed down at one of the tulips Bowser picked off his shell during his bath last night. It was all squished, and it looked tiny in his scaly hand.

"Pay attention, Junior…here's what you do." Bowser had said before handing him that flower. "Go find that girl again, and give it to her. Girls like that kind of stuff. But don't do anything mean to her. No fireballs, and don't taunt anybody. Just give her the flower."

"Um, why?"

"It might make her like you."

"You give mama Peach flowers all the time, and she gets mad!"

"That's different!"

"How?"

"Ugh." Bowser wiped both hands down his face. "It just is. Trust me on this. Give her the flower. What's her name again?"

"I don't remember," Junior grumbled, face heating up.

"Doesn't matter, maybe she'll tell you. Now go on. Use the warp zone. Remember, be nice!"

The warp zone in question was a tall red pipe right next to the lava. Junior had to climb, hop and shimmy over precarious rocks to reach it.

Taking a deep breath, he leapt in, endured the colorful, disorienting free fall and popped out in the wooded area behind the enormous Mushroom Kingdom castle.

"Hey!"

There she was again, this time wearing a pink shirt under a purple denim jumper. Grass clung to her ponytail.

Junior squinted at her and closed his fists, careful not to smash the tulip in his hand any more. She looked so weird!

The girl skipped up to him, the top of her head barely reaching his chin. No bandaids adorned her knees anymore, so her scabs were bare to the world.

"What's the matter? Did you forget how to talk?" She tilted her head.

Junior wanted to call her funny-looking, but his dad said he had to be nice! He squared his shoulders and thrust the smooshed, wilted tulip out at her.

The second she took it, he bolted back up the pipe he came through.

And she followed him in!

"Hey! Stop! Where are— whoa!"

Junior and the girl tumbled out of the pipe, both almost rolling into the lava.

Giant fans under the castle sucked away most of the heat and gaseous emissions, which saved her from getting cooked on the spot.

She yelped, leaping onto the nearest rocks. Her jump style looked exactly like Mario's. The tulip stuck out of her jumper pocket.

"You!" The girl gazed down, messy hair sticking up around her face. "How old are you?"

"Um…" Junior had to count his hatch-days on his fingers. "Four."

"Good, you can say more." She straightened, planting her hands on her hips. "I'm five!"

He balked. "So what?"

Shrugging, she clasped her hands behind her back and scuffed her shoe on the rock. "Your dad is Bowser, right?"

Junior joined her on the outcropping. "Yeah. Do you have a name?"

The girl dusted herself off. She bent one leg and leaned forward slightly in a graceful curtsey. "I'm princess Cherry Toadstool of the Mushroom Kingdom. And you?"

"Junior," Junior blurted out before remembering to give his formal full name. "Prince Bowser Koopa Junior of the Darklands Kingdom. I go by Junior."

Cherry smiled, her big eyes squinting. "Is your dad's castle really scary?"

"If you're Mario." Junior grinned back.

"He's my dad."

"Really?"

She looked up, sweating a little from the heat of the nearby lava. "He says it's kind of scary. Where's your dad?"

"Why do you wanna know?"

"He might steal me like he steals mom."

"Nah!" Junior jumped onto a higher up cliff and flexed his claws. "But I might."

"What if I get you instead?" Cherry leapt after him.

"No way!"

"Wanna bet?"

She was chasing him!

"Gah! No! You're doing it backwards! Ack! No!" Junior scrambled up a steep pathway with Cherry laughing at his heels.

She grabbed his tail, jumped on him and he hid in his shell to avoid getting stomped. The second he popped out, she ran after him again!

"I'm gonna get you!"

"No! Princesses don't do that!" Junior jumped over her and practically ran up the side of the cliff onto the drawbridge.

At first, being chased and jumped on terrified him, but her stomps never actually hurt. Soon, their game of chase became tag, and tag was fun!

.o

Music from Ludwig's piano filtered faintly through the castle halls. He figured out where he wanted the melody to go. It sounded like hopeful yearning.

Bowser leaned his elbow on his bedroom windowsill and watched Junior get chased around on the drawbridge by a girl three-fourths his size.

Mario jumping on his Koopa Clown Car may have been a catalyst for something wonderful. No, taking his Koopa Clown Car out to visit Peach set it in motion. Mario was fodder who bumbled into it, like always.

"You're it!" Cherry yelled.

"Ack!" Junior bolted away from her.

"I tagged your tail!"

"That doesn't count!"

"Why not?"

"I said so!"

"Cheater!"

"You're supposed to cheat!"

"In that case…"

"AAH!"

Bowser crossed the room to his dresser and picked up the small velvet black box sitting in the middle. Inside, a tiny gold ring. Scintillating diamonds speckled in a gold Koopa shell-shaped setting. A trinket so small it fit over the tip of his thumb claw like a crown.

One of Peach's earrings fell off the first time he kidnapped her. He had it made into this ring in order to propose to her for the first time.

She rejected his proposal. But she wore the ring for a solid five seconds before she did, so at least he knew it fit!

Still, that hurt.

Bowser blinked at something on his head and peered closer at his reflection in the round mirror. A gray hair sprouted just next to his left horn.

Holy shit, my first gray hair.

He laughed at himself. Time marched mercilessly, and now it marched on his head! His first gray hair!

Heh, first gray hair at forty-four. Not bad!

Crash killed most undiagnosed and untreated Koopas by age forty-five. The ones who survived the first heart attack often had more.

Bowser sighed noisily through his nose. He hated that he almost became a statistic, and he despised knowing he still could be one.

Crossing to the window again, he looked past the ring on his thumb claw. His russet eyes reflected images of Junior and Cherry playing below. The youngest Koopa prince and the Mushroom princess.

Ludwig's music continued, he was testing a new key change that really, really worked.

It sounded like life.

Junior caught Cherry's hand. They jumped up and down, laughing, and raced across the drawbridge.

Bowser smiled, wiggling his thumb so the ring sparkled like stars. The same glow shimmered in his eyes.

A future was being born here. It kicked and screamed with possibilities.

Would he live long enough to see it unfold?

He hoped so.

.o

.o