It was Mario and Luigi's shared birthday, since they were twins and all, and Princess Peach insisted on celebrating with a party. Bowser was still recovering and fixing his castle from the last kidnapping attempt the week before, and he disliked the brothers enough to leave them be on their birthday. Besides, it had been far too long since a party was held in their honor, usually for rescuing her after an especially arduous Bowser argument alone sounded reasonable enough for the brothers to relent despite their hesitence for their own reasons. For both, it was that Peach had the tiny curse of something always going wrong at a party she holds, for Luigi, it was mainly his shyness and not really liking large crowds. Plus, Mario couldn't say no to the very subtle and silent plea to Peach's face when she added that it had been so long since something was held in their honor.
With Peach absolutely certain that Bowser wouldn't intervene and with the Mario Brothers' permission, she went ahead in planning the party with Toadsworth and Toadette's help, certain that she was out of the woods.
Unbeknownst to her, something was lurking in the woods just down the road, already charting its course to make an entrance in her castle.
Peach couldn't have been more proud of her surprise choices for the brothers, especially for Luigi as he really seemed to need an appreciative pick-me-up as of late. For Mario…well, Toadette promised to think of an excuse to lead Toadsworth away, as much as the elderly steward approved of Mario as a potential suitor, the former ruling Regent in him still seemed opposed to the idea of letting anything get too far.
As she shook hands with guests she kept note of the time constantly, and the brothers had yet to arrive at their own party, which was very unlike them, never mind that the temperature in the whole ball room seemed chillier than normal. Did that torch change color briefly? Or was it just her imagination?
"I'll go check on them, Princess!" Offered the purple spotted Mail Toad of the Toad Brigade.
"That would be wonderful, thank you." She allowed with a nod of her head. She didn't want to ruin the surprise for Luigi if she didn't have to, even if it would be faster for one half of that surprise to go looking.
Ten minutes passed before Mail Toad returned, out of breath and the worry not leaving his face for a second.
He shook his head before he finally wheezed out, "I couldn't find them, I even looked around from top to bottom, they must've already left but…"
Peach shook her head as well, worry and concern completely sinking in as she replied to Mail Toad's unasked question. "They still haven't shown up. Which means something intercepted their path here."
"MORE LIKE SOMEONE!" Bellowed a sourceless voice as the air suddenly grew colder, enough for everyone's breath to be seen, an explosion sounded from somewhere seeming to indicate a source for the sudden cut of the electrical lights, in turn all the lit torches changed from fiery oranges, yellows and reds, to the various shades of blues and purples.
Boos materialized from thin air, exposing their presence and scaring the bejeesus out of all the Toad guests. The most dramatic of them all being a certain ghostly monarch who also materialized two paintings containing the missing birthday boys of the hour.
"King Boo!" Peach shrieked, surprised to hear that she was joined in that shriek by her two surprise guests for Luigi, Princess Daisy of Sarasaland and Prince Peasley of the Beanbean Kingdom.
Evidently the unrest of the missing brothers had reached their ears, never mind the time, that it was getting late and what was planned hadn't even happened yet. Prince Peasley drew his sword and pointed it at King Boo, but no more than that since the threat of the brothers' safety was already at risk. At least Peasley left the threat that he was willing to defend if need be. King Boo wasn't fazed though, the sword was a mere rapier, practically a needle.
Toadsworth clung to Princess Peach's skirts with both hands fearfully, cursing his natural Toadly cowardly nature all the while especially in the face of an enemy monarch. Toadette on the other hand kept on a brave face for everyone's sake, after all she's dealt with worse than Boos no matter how big and scary.
"Ah, Princess Peach, lovely to finally formally make your acquaintance outside of Bowser requested run-ins, Plumber hosted Parties, Kart races and other sporting events both Olympic and casual, and the last attack at The Last Resort Hotel, I suppose. Bean boy, Flower princess, nice to formally make your acquaintances as well." King Boo greeted…surprisingly politely (aside from clearly not caring for the presence of the other two royals), before going back to his gloating sneer.
Peach nodded in equal respect of a greeting before getting right down to the obvious business.
"I see you have the Mario Brothers, but since you're still here lingering that must mean you want something." There was no need to ask how he got out this time, it really could've been anything.
"Quite right. I'm mostly here to give you a fair warning shot. Invading and making the Mushroom Kingdom my new capital for takeover will be too easy now that my nemesis and his stupidly red-dressed brother are out of the figurative picture!" King Boo all but cackled in delight.
"Even better, it's the plumber's birthday taday!" Chortled a Boo that looked like a 1930s thug with his striped vest and a bowler hat, complete with his city accent.
"Is it really?" King Boo marveled finally taking in the occasional 'Happy Birthday' decoration on certain walls. "Well Happy Birthday to ME, Baby Luigi! Mwa hahaha!" He hovered Luigi's portrait closer to his face and practically waltzed with it a little. Then he remembered something and turned around completely to bellow," Bootstrap, Booreaucrat! Are we ready to proceed with the plan?!"
"Yes, sire!" Two Boos, one smaller than average with blue bottom rimmed specter-cles and a clearly feminine but uptight average sized Boo with red cat-eye rimmed specter-cles replied enthusiastically. In part because of the Booish chaos around them of Boos continually and gleefully scaring Toads into corners if not out of the castle all together.
"Excellent!" King Boo cajoled before turning to face the royal trio, the elderly steward and the handmaiden. "And one more thing, Princess…" His form faded until he was completely invisible.
Peach counted the seconds before slapping the air where she thought he might be, like Mario told her after the Paper duplicates adventure when he recounted the tale of going up against the ghostly monarch with Luigi and Paper Mario.
Unfortunately she didn't hit him, he must've gone wide to go around, then she felt a tap on her shoulder. Knowing he probably wasn't there she tried to back hand punch him in his nonexistent snoot. Still no dice. Then she punched over her other shoulder out of a mere guess.
"Ack!" King Boo yelped at being hit despite his invisibility. Now visible, the two stared at each other in dumbfoundment, Peach could hardly believe she managed to hit him after a guess. King Boo was having a hard time comprehending that she hit him despite being invisible. "This isn't over, Princess." He warned with a glare before rushing at her to make her flinch.
She did and felt his invisible body float through her before hearing him whistle for the other Boos to follow, disappearing from view and most likely completely out of the castle.
It wasn't until it was absolutely still and dark that the trio of royals collapsed in exhaustion to their knees or just the one knee in Prince Peasley's case.
"Oh, Poppet, he has Masters Mario and Luigi… we're defenseless without them! What are we going to do?" Toadsworth wailed. Former reigning Regent or not, the Mushroom Kingdom's never really had to deal with Boos of this caliber before, though, Lady Bow's own colony over in Forever Forest was close, that was child's play compared to this all out attack.
"I have an idea…" Toadette piped up. "But you're not gonna like it."
"We are not asking Bowser for help." Peach answered the unasked question, knowing her little lady in waiting all too well.
"Just an idea, he seemed smug enough to not expect Bowser, not to mention I'm pretty sure I recall that King Boo wants to take over the world too…which means he's gonna have to get in line since Bowser's already adamant about that." Toadette replied sagely.
"Then Bowser can deal with it himself. If Peachy asks him for help, he'll just want her hand in marriage in return." Daisy quipped to lighten the mood.
"And of course that's reasonably and completely out of the question." Peasley added for the sake of it.
They all hummed in agreement, taking in the dark peace as it was despite still hearing some shivering Toads that couldn't move because they were scared of the dark.
Thankfully Captain Toad showed up in all his lit up head lantern glory to help the remaining scared Toads get to the castle exit, and then went to go see the completely destroyed fuse box that looked as though a bomb or a stick of dynamite had been the cause of its destruction. It would have to be dealt with in the morning.
A.N:Right so, let's get the Pak E. Derm out of the room shall we?
Queen of Boos was a fic of the crack ship of King Boo and Princess Peach. The original author lost steam while writing because of a myriad of reasons that are mostly personal to them. But most notably like the rest of us in this particular crack ship discord, we all lost steam for it because of the lack of Mario content in general, even if Luigi's Mansion 3 had JUST come out at least a few months before they suddenly deleted the fic two chapters short of their 20 chapters goal. We in the Kippea (the crack ship name) discord were only able to salvage 17 of those 18 chapters, thanks to supermariogirl's brilliance of saving the majority of the fic on PDF. I could've tried to rewrite the missing chapter from memory, but it was foggy enough at the discovery of the deletion that there was no way I could do it justice, I even attempted to at least write down all the key bits of dialouge and description that I could remember and simply implement them as a "PREVIOUSLY ON QUEEN OF BOOS" thing and continued how I thought they would continue.
Instead, as you can tell, I finally took a different course of action.
It is a rewrite, even though I'm pretty sure the OG author Honest to goodness doesn't care for their original fic or this ship anymore, I only paraphrased every now and then to be safe. I made new character for most of their OC Boos, but two of which I couldn't replace because of naming conventions and plot reasons. Boovelope and Bootiful.
20GodDamn Chappies, if you ever see this, know that I still love you platonically with every fiber of my being and that you're still welcome back in the Kippea discord if you want, its still kinda dead right now, so I'm about to resurrect it I guess.
If you want to compare fics (up to ch17 in the original's case) you'll have to join the Kippea discord, and go to the pinned section of the general text channel.
/ZVRyF4YqRh
^ Join the Kippea Discord!^.^ You know how it normally goes, and you can see it better in full on Ao3 anyway.
Bootch and Bootstrap are my OC's you can find a picture of Bootch on my DeviantArt of the same penname as I am on here. Bootstrap is taking place of the OG author's OC, Boosely.
I'm posting correctly here to see where I would be if I kept the chapter lengths as they were originally, as I wasn't sure how much longer my additions to the story would take.