Vicissitude

by Cyndi

Bowser learns he is dying as Junior prepares for his wedding and his future. This is a story about life, death and legacies. (Sequel to Liminal Lacuna)

9. Epilogue

Music credit:

"The Fountain" OST by Clint Mansell

.o

.o

In the end…

The old castle in the Darklands volcano became the thriving Koopa Royal museum chronicling the Koopa royal family. Junior's siblings sometimes made surprise appearances to the delight of visitors, but Junior himself couldn't bear to go back there once he left. The memories weighed too much.

Mario worked with Junior and Cherry to continue the joining of their kingdoms. Within five years they finished it, and named their new country the United Darklands-Mushroom Kingdom, or UDMK, but most people began to colloquially call it the Koopa-Toadstool empire.

Wendy started a new business, named WendyCorp, and it slowly became a juggernaut in the Koopa beauty industry. She shot ahead as a leader in hair, fashion and makeup trends. Designers flocked to work for her brand, where she helped nobodies become household names.

It wasn't long before names like Joanne, Galileo, Fantasia, Mads and Pearl showed up on makeup, clothing, claw polish, jewelry and handbags.

Roy became the best chef the Koopa-Toadstool family had ever seen thanks to his night school culinary classes. He never did it professionally, it was a hobby to him, but he loved catering parties and feeding everybody, and had fun swapping recipes with Black.

Sienna and Morton took Aretha to see Billie for her baseline echocardiogram and angiogram two days after her fifth hatch-day. Israel did her tail stick. She never cried once.

"It stung a little," she said. "Uncle Junior, how come you screamed so much?"

Junior chuckled about that for days.

At age ten, she had her second checkup, and Billie discovered her Crash was stage four. Dissolving stents were put in, the same ones Junior got.

Morton and Sienna sat with her the whole time. She was never afraid.

Ludwig and Black brought Wolfgang for testing. Like Lemmy, he had to be knocked completely out. He only hollered once during the needle poke in his tail before the sedatives eased him towards sleep.

His heart looked beautiful on the echocardiogram, albeit they were concerned about his large aortic valve. The angiogram went smoothly. He woke up after it all with his two dads snuggled up to him on the gurney.

Wolfgang had to do it again once he turned ten. Black and Ludwig got the reassuring news— his large aortic valve was a normal anatomical variation, no Crash.

Aretha came to be tall and muscular like Morton and Sienna. She wore her coily black hair in twin puffs, which she decorated with glitter and beads. Her gorgeous face turned many heads. Once, she had an agent approach her for modeling.

She took on the modeling gig when she turned sixteen and did it for a year. Clothes, makeup, sunglasses and claw polish. Morton and Sienna's only rule was no sexually-charged ads. Anything the royal family said had more weight than most, so people were careful with her. She killed it on the runway modeling clothes for teen Koopas.

As she got bigger, her three vertical shell spikes thickened so much that her shell hurt her back, so she had them hollowed out to reduce their weight and save her spine.

Wolfgang grew enormously during his growth spurt. At fifteen, he was already as large as Junior. By eighteen, he towered a full head taller. His shoulders were a foot broader than Morton's and his hands were bigger than Ludwig's head. Four long spikes grew along his tail. His three front teeth stayed prominently visible due to his overbite, his feathery white hair remained baby-fine and the length in the back hung draped in front of his shoulders. Junior joked that his big, bushy white eyebrows kept his bangs from falling into his eyes, but that didn't stop them from trying to.

Mario compared Wolfgang's spectacularly large horns to an African wildebeest. Nobody except Luigi had any idea what he meant. They added eleven inches to his height and gave his angular features an imposing edge.

His voice deepened a full octave lower than Bowser's. He would have made a stupendous basso profundo in an opera chorus. Sometimes Lemmy sat next to him when he vocal-stimmed because he enjoyed the vibrations of his humming.

Wolfgang's frighteningly handsome appearance belied his gentle giant nature. All someone had to do was watch Ludwig feed him, see Black give him a bath or witness the magic he worked at a piano for the truth to reveal itself.

When he outgrew his childhood spiked collar, Lemmy made him a new one identical to its predecessor.

The makers of Runners brand briefs had to invent a whole new size class for him so he could continue wearing them. They worked with WendyCorp to design briefs that looked like fashionable shorts while staying comfortable for Koopas with sensory sensitivities. Wolfgang preferred the stretchy pull-up types that only required tearing the tabs apart for messy changes.

He never spoke a word. All his communication came through his tablet, PECS cards and Koopa Sign.

Black and Ludwig recorded their voices on Wolfgang's tablet, and somehow the software combined them to grant Wolfgang a baritone rumble that suited him. He would use that voice for the rest of his life.

Aretha appointed herself as Wolfgang's protector. Nobody could say a negative thing about him without her interjecting.

Once, she punched another teenager for calling him stupid.

"And I'll do it again," she said when confronted.

Little did anyone realize how much she meant it.

.o

A decade of digging uncovered Wolfgang's biological parents. He wanted to know who they were and take a look at them if they still lived, so Iggy scoured the internet until he dug up the results.

His father, a computer tech named Andrew, died the day of Junior's coronation. Evidence pointed to suicide by poisoning. Maybe he saw Wolfgang collar a king and the guilt grew to be too much.

His mother was Joanne, the well-known fashion designer for Wendy's company. Joanne, of all people!

She concealed the secret of what she did by destroying Wolfgang's hatching certificate and having her computer tech husband delete him from the system via hacking. And she might have gotten away with it if he didn't forget to delete a medical record for fertility treatments.

Joanne wanted a child, didn't like the one she got and dumped him off to die.

When he turned nineteen, Wolfgang asked to see her. He wouldn't be talked out of it. Aretha took him to her by car since he enjoyed riding in convertibles with the top down. She owned a nice deep purple Cyclonus, a popular car brand among Koopas.

Like Wolfgang, Joanne had albinism, albeit not as pronounced— her scales were pale like lettuce leaves, her shell white and her eyes light red. She dyed her short hair gold, the white roots visible underneath.

"Justin!" She rushed to embrace Wolfgang when he appeared on her mansion doorstep, but he didn't return the affection.

"Who?" Wolfgang typed on his tablet.

"You're Justin! My son, Justin!" She cried on his chest. No remorse for how she hurt him. "I saw you collar our king, Justin!"

"Not Justin." Wolfgang scowled and typed again, "Wolfgang."

He backed out of her arms and signed, "Why?"

Joanne stopped, tearful eyes drying up and icing over.

"You changed. You turned a year old, and you went from a normal, babbling, happy child to something I didn't recognize anymore. You weren't the son I loved and hoped for. You were impossible to handle. I couldn't do it. I couldn't make you behave."

She gestured up and down at him, her expression chilling further.

"Look at you! You're an adult and you're still in diapers! You can't talk or take care of yourself! Who put up with you all these years, huh?"

Wolfgang narrowed his eyes. That was all the answer he needed. He swiped to another screen on his tablet, grunted, and typed, "Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you."

With that, he turned to leave. Joanne grabbed his hand, bawling.

"Don't walk away from me! I'm your mother, Justin!"

Wolfgang pulled out of her grasp and kept walking.

"Justin!" Joanne trailed behind, shouting at him. "You still don't listen! Justin!"

Aretha jumped out of her car and punched her so hard she lost three teeth as she stumbled against the hedge lining her curving walkway.

"You sadistic jerk!" She pointed an accusing finger at Joanne's tearful face, growling, "Those tears are as fake as your love for him! He's a member of the royal Koopa family now! We know what you did to him, and I'll make sure everybody finds out! He lived because people better than you care about him! Now you get to watch him walk away."

"You'll ruin me!" Joanne wailed.

"No, bitch, you ruined yourself when you hurt him."

Wolfgang and Aretha left her there to sob pitifully. He didn't show any emotion during the drive back. Aretha rubbed his shoulder anyway, knowing it was building up.

She stopped at a ShellBucks drive-thru to get him his favorite treat, chocolate ice cream in a cup, and he gazed questioningly into her eyes as she fed him every delicious bite.

"Hey." Aretha cleaned the brown dribbles off his chin with a damp napkin. "You don't belong to her. It doesn't matter that she gave you life. Blood doesn't bind families together, love does. You're part of the Koopa clan, Wolfgang, and we love you."

That night, he woke Ludwig and Black while bawling his eyes out. He played a recording of what Joanne said, which Ludwig interpreted for Black.

They leapt out of bed and embraced him, piling their love onto him as he wailed, screamed and sobbed.

Ludwig took Wolfgang's face between his hands and signed, "I chose you, and you were never too much for me. You were never hard to love. Never, my son. I loved you when I first laid eyes on you. I loved you when you struggled, and I loved you when you triumphed. I would do it all again. I love you for who you are. I love you. I love you. I love you. There was never a moment where I did not love you, my precious, wonderful, beautiful son, and there will never be a moment where I stop loving you."

His eyes were fierce, glistening with tears. He stroked Wolfgang's hair and kissed his forehead.

Black, who cried at seeing his son so distraught, pointed to Ludwig and signed, "Everything he said. I chose you, too. I love you, son, always! This house is better with you in it and I never regretted adopting you. You belong here! Anyone who says you don't belong is lying, and I will fight them! I love you, my boy, my son, my sweet, amazing son, that is not ever going to change. Everybody in this family loves you and will love you forever."

Wolfgang nestled into the comfort of their arms and believed their words. Their love melted Joanne's cruel hate off him like flames melting wax.

The next day, Aretha called Wendy up to let her know who Joanne was, emailed her the recordings from Wolfgang's tablet as evidence, and Wendy fired her from the company before the phone call concluded.

Wolfgang chose not to have his mother arrested or executed. The scandal about Joanne as "the abuser of Baby X, later known as Wolfgang Amadeus Koopason" exploded all over the news. Nobody wanted to hire her. She never escaped the shame of her cruelty, and it followed her to her death a year later.

Joanne crashed her car into a boulder, and her shell snapped her neck. Not even the coroners could tell if she did it by accident or intentionally, but they found enough alcohol in her system to indicate she was drunk when it happened.

Wolfgang received her organs as her only living next of kin. He decided to throw them away because he refused to take anything of hers beyond her DNA.

Ludwig and Black drove him to the lava pits near the ocean where most people disposed of rotting food and let him do the honors.

He dropped the cloth bundle wet with her organs inside and watched it burst into flames as it landed. The cloth burned away first, revealing her organs as they bubbled to a crisp.

"You're better than her!" Black signed, kicking rocks into the orange pit.

Ludwig kissed Wolfgang's cheek and rubbed his shoulder, signing, "I'm proud of you."

Wolfgang stood with the dads who chose him, stared down at the burning viscera of the mother who threw him away, and felt vindicated.

Junior found out about all of it via ClawBook, since Wolfgang, Ludwig and Black posted pictures of everything. He left scratches and heart emojis.

Time ticked on, inexorable in its advance, and death lurked in its shadow. Junior had no idea of the many maelstroms about to unfold in his life, or how much it would hurt.

.o

Morton died suddenly at sixty-two, the same age as Bowser.

Sienna was on tour with Serrated at the time. Morton packed up the stage like he always did after a show and returned to the hotel room. He said he didn't feel well because he pulled a muscle in his back hefting an amp.

Aretha discovered him face-down on the floor, mouth open and eyes rolled back. His snout hit the footboard of the bed, denting the metal, gashing his nose and knocking out one of his teeth. Blood splattered everywhere, including on the phone beside his hand.

Even worse, he was still warm, so he died minutes before their arrival.

Sienna bawled while clutching his body. "I'm here, Morton. It's okay, I'm here."

Aretha held her tears in until the medics zipped the body bag, then she sobbed in Sienna's arms.

She found Morton's tooth as they prepared to leave the wrecked hotel room, and she kept it without telling anybody.

Morton's sudden death rocked the Koopa-Toadstool family just as much as Bowser's. Junior never forgot holding Aretha while she screamed and pounded on his shoulders. He understood exactly how she felt.

An autopsy revealed a massive aortic dissection, a rare complication of Crash. The torn arterial lining ripped free across his aortic arch, formed an aneurysm and burst. Blood flooded his pericardial sac, causing tamponade until his heart collapsed.

The tear probably began that morning, formed a painful aneurysm during all the heavy lifting of equipment before the concert— leaving him feeling unwell with back pain— and the rupture happened after he returned to his room. Coroners said the rupture was so violent that he would have felt a sharp, intense chest pain and collapsed due to the abrupt loss of blood pressure. It took him under three minutes to go from alive to dead.

Though Morton died tragically young like Bowser, he lived thirty years longer than he would have without stents. Once the coroners cleared all the blood away, they discovered his heart was scarred from a silent heart attack in his circumflex artery. His body surrounded the partially-blocked artery in neovascularization, a natural bypass.

Larry read the report through tears, and said, "There would've been no way to save him after that. He was dead before he hit the floor."

But Morton's phone malfunctioned when he dropped it, leaving it stuck turned on, and the screen showed he tried to call an ambulance.

Junior wondered if Larry told the truth, or if he said that to spare everyone the possibility that Morton writhed on the floor in excruciating pain before he died. He kept his mouth shut and didn't question it.

"Dying alone like that is one of my worst fears," Roy said, wringing his hands.

"What's your other one?" Larry asked, only half-serious.

"Getting told I'm gonna die in a short time when there's nothing I can do about it. I don't want to see it coming, or know it's coming, I just…I'd rather go to sleep and never wake up." Roy answered seriously.

Iggy grumbled, throwing his sponge down. "Can't believe we lost Morton this way. Sucks."

The morticians couldn't close Morton's mouth properly, so the wires and stitches were visible despite their best efforts. They did a beautiful job of sealing the gash in his nose with transparent stitches until it barely showed, so Junior didn't complain.

Aretha sobbed throughout the entire process of bathing Morton's body for the wake. Sienna numbly dressed him in a dark brown tux, and the stiff shirt collar helped push his mouth closed.

Cherry cried when she saw him laid out on the hay. Lemmy laid on his chest and bawled helplessly. Everybody was wrecked.

Junior thought back to the last time they talked. It was a video call, while Morton stayed in the colorful Rainbow Road Hotel on the south side of Sarasaland.

"Just some heartburn this morning. Probably those dang chili pepper scrambled eggs I keep eating." Morton laughed, his wide face half in shadow. "I'm keeping the pharmacy downstairs in business with all the antacids I'm buying!"

"Those eggs will get'cha." Junior grinned, those things were like eating fire. "I better let you go, I know you have a busy day. Tell Aretha and Sienna hi."

"Will do." Morton's eyes softened. "Love you, stent bro."

"Love you, too, stent bro. Bye."

They waved to each other on their screens, and Junior would never see Morton alive again.

The family entombed him in the interior southeast wall of Bowser's volcano per his instructions, and a stone plaque marked his final resting place. Sienna pushed an amp into the tomb with him.

Larry took Morton's donated heart apart and studied it all the way to the molecular level, determined to find a cure for Crash.

Wendy, Cherry and Pom-Pom surrounded Sienna and Aretha in as much love and support they could offer while they struggled through their grief.

Life wobbled back towards equilibrium, albeit scarred and wounded by loss.

.o

Junior, Cherry and Iggy sat together in the lavish marble living room while afternoon summer rain beat against the window.

"…so Lemmy wiped it on me instead and left me with the mess!" Junior finished telling Iggy about one of Lemmy's many gross booger mishaps.

"Gross." Cherry snickered.

Iggy laughed uproariously, slapping his knees. "He used to eat 'em as a kid! That's nasty! AHAHAHA!"

He froze, his laugh transformed into a grating banshee shriek and he twisted to look in horrible fright at something behind him. A moment later, his limbs extended in front of him as if stretching after waking from slumber, except they continued tensing up.

Iggy never seized like that before, not without going through a focal dyscognitive aura first. He tipped sideways in the chair, dangerously close to falling off head-first.

"Iggy!" Cherry set her book aside and grabbed his shoulders to stop him from sliding forward. She placed her delicate abdominal area in reach of his sharp claws, unaware of the danger.

Junior followed, staying calm despite this not looking like Iggy's normal seizure pattern.

"Tonic clonic. Start timing it, and stand back. His claws and spikes will cut you."

Cherry backed off.

Junior eased Iggy onto the floor, rolled him onto his side and tucked a pillow under his head. Iggy stayed in the stiff tonic phase for over a minute, far longer than he usually did. His tongue paled to sickly white.

"He's getting pale!" Cherry pointed out. "Is he breathing?"

"I can't tell. Shit!"

Junior grabbed Iggy's emergency Ativan gel out of his shell and squirted it into his nostril rather than his mouth. He was drooling too much, and it needed to be in contact with mucous membranes to work.

"Come on, Iggy, fight your way out."

"Three minutes," Cherry whispered, hugging herself. She teared up. Junior rubbed her arm.

Finally, Iggy transitioned towards jerking. Big, wide, violent contractions wracked his muscles. He gasped and grunted in wet, gurgling spurts, so at least he was moving air into his lungs.

Spit poured out of his mouth in frothy white foam stained red from his bitten tongue. The brown pillow cushioning his head darkened as his spittle soaked the satin fabric.

Cherry sniffled and tapped Junior's shell. "Five minutes, thirty seconds."

"Too long. Call downstairs."

She grabbed her cell phone.

A horrid smell permeated the room because Iggy ejected everything in his bladder and bowels. Junior pulled him away from the mess, but he kept producing more. It smeared everywhere.

Iggy was still convulsing when Israel, Peter and Gabriel rushed in with a stretcher.

"We're at the seven minute mark now," Cherry told them, her face pale with worry. "Junior gave him the Ativan, and it won't stop."

"It's okay, we'll take care of him." Israel said gently. He took Iggy's glasses off and passed them to Junior.

"We're looking at convulsive status epilepticus. We have to stabilize him before we can transport. Over." Gabriel murmured into his walkie-talkie. The response was too garbled to make out.

Israel had to clean the urine and feces off Iggy's tail to start an IV. He did it without hesitation and threw chux pads over the disaster on the floor to help stop the stench.

Peter managed to stick ECG cups to Iggy's chest and upper arms. All-too-familiar beeps and chirps broke the susurrus of wind-blown rain on the window. Iggy's pulse showed up on the screen as green spikes beating over a hundred times a minute. His SATs were in the eighties. Nobody could get the oxygen on him with his head shifting so much. Not good.

"Pushing Keppra," Gabriel said, his gloved hands drawing up the medicine in the syringe and injecting it through the IV line Israel established.

"Gods," Cherry turned away, sniffling.

"How fast will that work?" Junior asked. "I gave him an Ativan squirt in his nose and it isn't doing a thing!"

"Give it a minute. The combo of both might do the trick," Peter said.

Junior kept his hand on Iggy's shoulder while his violent jerks slowed down to a stop.

Iggy rasped twice, groaned and stiffened, going into another tonic clonic seizure without recovering.

"Damn!" Gabriel cursed, grabbing the nasal cannula. He fit the prongs into Iggy's nose just before his body started jerking violently back and forth again.

Cherry crammed herself next to Junior and stroked the top of Iggy's head. "Iggy, come out of it! Please!"

Blood spilled through Iggy's jaws as his teeth sawed into his tongue. His SATs wouldn't rise despite the oxygen in place.

"No choice. Israel, get the phenobarbital," Gabriel said.

Junior's blood ran cold. That was the last line of defense, it basically shut the brain off. He sobbed once and whispered in Iggy's ear, "Hang in there, big brother. We'll sort this out."

Israel bent over them, soft voice gentle, "You have to move, I'm sorry."

Plastic packaging crackled. Everybody wearing gloves changed into fresh pairs.

Junior and Cherry stepped back. Israel pushed the phenobarbital, pulled Iggy's shell off, suctioned the excessive spit out of his mouth and intubated him as soon as he stopped convulsing. Gabriel squeezed the ambu bag, Israel lifted Iggy onto the gurney, Peter gathered all the medical equipment and Gabriel led them out into the corridor.

Cherry looked at Junior, her dazed eyes not focusing. Junior swallowed. He felt sick to his stomach. The room reeked of piss and shit, the same as it did when Bowser died. Iggy's shell was still on the rug next to plastic wrapping and bodily waste material.

Three Toad maids came in to clean up without complaint.

"It'll be all right, your majesties," the chubby one said, her eyes glistening with grandmotherly warmth.

Goombas joined them with buckets, brushes and disinfectant. The room went from stinking to lemony fresh in under fifteen minutes.

Junior looked out the window at the gloomy sky. The rain suited how he felt.

Four hours later, after a quick sandwich dinner neither ate much of, Junior and Cherry sat together in the pale green intensive care ward. Iggy was lifeless on the pastel yellow bed, his chest rising whenever the hissing gray ventilator tube pushed air into his lungs.

He was in a medically induced coma to halt the unstoppable seizure activity. A burst-suppression pattern, Michael called it.

CT and MRI scans didn't show anything abnormal for him. They risked an encephalogram to check for strokes, aneurysms or brain bleeds that didn't show up on CT or MRI scans, but that came back looking normal.

Iggy was perfectly compliant in taking his Depakote. If he needed a change of dosage, he rolled with it. He didn't drink, smoke or do anything that risked lowering his seizure threshold.

Tests continued, checking him from top to bottom. The only thing the medics found was a budding kidney infection that hadn't become symptomatic yet, so they started antibiotics to treat it.

Cherry held Junior's hand while she mass-texted their families to alert them of what happened.

Junior struggled to not see Bowser lying there. The horrible memories of intensive care seemed to follow him regardless of location.

The kidney infection cleared up in twenty-four hours. Iggy's condition stabilized, so they reduced the phenobarbital and began to gently introduce his Depakote again. He stayed on the ventilator since his respiratory drive hadn't returned yet.

"Iggy," Junior rubbed his older brother's forearm while Cherry held his hand.

"Hi, Iggy. Can you squeeze my hand?" Cherry asked.

Iggy's eyelids fluttered and he gripped Cherry's hand tighter.

She smiled as she kissed his cheek. "Good job. You'll be feeling better real soon."

"Hey, Iggster." Junior picked up his other hand. "Looks like you had a rough time, huh?"

Iggy opened his eyes and squinted since he didn't have his glasses on. His thin green eyebrows furrowed, as if he didn't know where he was or what happened. And who would after the mess of seizures he had? He closed his eyes and gave in to slumber once more.

Junior and Cherry left him alone to rest, comforted that he would be okay.

The phone rang at two in the morning. Iggy went into cardiac arrest, but they got his pulse back.

His heart stopped again three hours later, and yet again two hours after that.

Junior walked in on the final, valiant resuscitation effort following a fourth arrest. He never forgot the silence, or George's voice trembling as he said, "Time of death, oh-seven-sixteen."

Junior bawled as he called his siblings and told them to get to the KTC immediately. Cherry hugged him as the medics rushed Iggy away.

Iggy wanted to donate his usable organs, so the medics took him into surgery to hook him up on bypass and extend how long his organs would be viable. They administered anesthetic drugs and painkillers to ensure he wouldn't perceive any kind of pain during retrieval, and they left the bypass machine running after they finished.

Peter cleaned up all the blood and disposed of bloodied sponges and instruments. George placed Iggy's life-saving organs in coolers and sent them on their way. Israel covered his open torso with a sterile black sheet that wouldn't show bloodstains for Cherry's sake before bringing his family into the OR.

Iggy laid there, the endotracheal tube still protruding out of his mouth. His foggy eyes were half-closed, his muscles slack. Hyperactive, wild Iggy did not look right lying so motionless.

Roy sobbed inconsolably against Iggy's forehead. Wendy caressed his cheek, sniffling. Larry smoothed his graying plume of hair. Ludwig kissed his hands and massaged them with his thumbs. Lemmy sat on his feet, whimpering.

Black led Jack to the table and Ludwig gave him Iggy's hand to hold. Junior helped Scott perch on the table next to Lemmy. Cherry clutched Junior's wrist so tight her knuckles were pale.

Ludwig beckoned Sienna to bring Aretha and Wolfgang forward. Sienna brushed her knuckles against Iggy's neck. Aretha took one look at him, sobbed and hid her face against her mom's shoulder. Wolfgang patted Iggy's knee. Junior looked on, numb.

Everybody was raw. Morton died just last year, and now they were losing Iggy. It wasn't fair.

Nobody wanted to give the order to shut off the bypass machine. Cherry did it, quietly, with teardrops streaming down her face.

Israel shut off the bypass device. Tears glistened in his eyes.

"Twin!" Lemmy scurried forward to hug Iggy's head and screamed when the bypass machine stopped whirring.

Just like that, Iggy was gone far too soon.

His lungs, liver, kidneys, bone marrow and blood saved many lives. The medics kindly retrieved his heart and entrails for the wake meal.

Iggy was sixty-nine years old, and medics listed his cause of death as SUDEP.

At his wake, Iggy wore the obnoxious bright green tux he had on at Junior's wedding. His slack face was locked in an expression of profound sadness that wasn't typical of him. A Koopa Troopa stood by with a towel to mop his face because embalming fluid kept leaking out of his mouth. The whole place reeked like the morgue. Sienna threw incense into the fireplace to get rid of the stench.

Lemmy sobbed, "Where are his glasses? He can't see without his glasses! Put his glasses on! Put on his glasses!"

Junior retrieved them. Iggy looked more like himself with those round black frames on his face.

"It ain't fair!" Roy sobbed against Pom-Pom's chest.

Black cried on Ludwig's shoulder. Wendy leaned on Sienna and Aretha. Jack patted Wolfgang's shell.

Scott, Lemmy and Larry clung to each other. Iggy was their neighbor and roomate, so their household lost its loudest member.

Three weeks later, Lemmy put Iggy's glasses on him one last time before sealing him into his shell for his lava flow burial. South Darklands Peak was a popular gravesite.

Everybody stood around, watching the lava consume Iggy's shell. The roses Cherry threw burned up before impact.

Junior cried, watching his devastated family flounder in the wake of two close-together deaths.

Iggy's and Lemmy's joint hatch-day rolled around a month after Iggy's funeral. He used to prank Lemmy horribly every year, so it didn't feel right without some kind of smoke, confetti, silly string, fart noises or scream-laughing.

Lemmy spent it crying and refused to celebrate. He ate his cake and opened his gifts the next day, alone, without celebration. From that year on, his hatch-days were quiet affairs.

Time charged onward, uncaring.

.o

Junior found his first gray hair right after he turned fifty-nine. Maybe his dad aged prematurely due to all the heart attacks. But once he found one, more slowly appeared.

Cherry had grays in her heart shaped bangs and mixed into the length like pepper. She said her graying pattern followed Mario's, and she didn't bother dyeing it.

"Will you let your mustache turn white, too?" Junior teased her.

Cherry bopped him with her spoon, which had spaghetti sauce on it, and cracked up at the chunky red streak it left on his snout.

Junior's five-year echo-angio rolled around three days after his sixtieth hatch-day. Everything checked out. Perfect valves and no dangerously narrowed arteries of note.

Ludwig took him out for drinks to celebrate. Junior was still recovering from the sedatives he got twenty-four hours previous, so he ended up more drunk than usual.

"Damn, my head is spinning," Junior signed.

They got quite the laugh letting Wolfgang try a shot of Hard Scale Golden Whiskey. He asked for it, slammed back the shot and his face almost turned inside out.

"Best whiskey face ever!" Junior caught a photo of the moment. "How's that taste, Wolfgang?"

"Shit!" Wolfgang signed, shoving his thumb into his fist. He grimaced and shook his head.

"Don't encourage him." Ludwig smirked over his martini.

Wolfgang unleashed the loudest belch Junior ever heard in his life. Even Ludwig perceived it, and he rarely made out individual noises in crowded places.

He furrowed his brow, signing, "What do we say when we belch?"

"Excused," Wolfgang signed, giggling.

Junior high-foured him for that impressive burp. Bowser would've laughed the hardest at it.

.o

Two years later, Junior started his sixty-second hatch-day on his balcony, watching the sun come up with Cherry at his side and wondering what all of this meant.

"Dad, I'm as old as you were," he whispered to the sunrise. The light gleamed off the gray streaks in his hair and bushy eyebrows.

Cherry kissed his cheek and held him while he cried on her shoulder.

Junior wanted this hatch-day to stay simple. No wild party, no presents, just cake, his family around him and quietude. Everyone understood why and abided by his request.

That year, Bowser's death date hit Junior harder than watching him die. It wasn't a grief wave, it was an overwhelming tsunami. He didn't talk to anybody or leave his room until it receded.

Iggy's and Morton's hatch-days and death dates hit everybody hard. Nobody smiled on those dates.

The curse of a large family was mourning many deaths. Bowser, Morton and Iggy were only the start of a long cascade.

.o

Mario never wanted to admit his growing frailty, not even when he lost a lot of weight, developed kyphosis and changed out his little half-moon glasses for full on bifocals.

"You poor old-a fart," Mario said to Junior in jest.

"Hey, you're a fossilized fart," Junior quipped back. "Look at you, you're getting skinnier than Luigi! I'm gonna mistake you for a spaghetti noodle and boil you one of these days!"

Mario cough-laughed. "Touché!"

During the winter, He replaced a cracked pipe that sprayed him with icy water. A younger man could shake that off, but he came down with bronchitis and pleurisy at the same time, a painful combo.

The pleurisy cleared up, but the bronchitis sank into pneumonia that wouldn't wholly dissipate despite rounds of antibiotics. He got better, started coughing again, got better, started coughing again and it continued on like that for five months.

Even worse, he made the same mistake as Bowser by not being forthcoming about his struggles.

"It's just a little cough, I'm almost through it," he told Cherry over a video call.

Mario collapsed and fell down the same staircase that killed Peach. The only thing that saved him was he tucked himself in a ball, so he tumbled sideways instead of headfirst. Miraculously, he didn't break any bones or bleed internally, but he was in too much pain to get up. His guards made him lay still until the castle medics took him away and verified no neck or spinal injuries.

He laid in the medical ward bruised, battered, and horribly sick.

Murphtoad didn't mince words when he told Mario that his lungs were failing. Mario knew his time was coming, he could feel it. He signed a DNR and asked to be taken upstairs to his own bed.

Murphtoad called Cherry to alert her, because Mario wasn't going to. She thanked him for the call and turned to Junior after. Tears spilled out of her eyes.

"Now we're both going to be without our daddies."

Junior enfolded her in his arms and cried with her because he understood the dread opening a pit in her stomach. They packed some essentials and took a warp pipe to the Mushroom Castle.

Nurses attended to Mario, ensuring proper pain control and comfort. He never felt a twinge thanks to their care. When Cherry and Junior arrived, he was sitting up in bed, eating soup and looking through old photo albums of Cherry's childhood.

"Daddy," Cherry sniffled.

Mario pushed the album aside to hug her. He wasn't wearing his white gloves, so his soft hands caressed her cheek.

"Everything will be okey-donkey, my sweet-a Cherry blossom."

Luigi and Daisy arrived not long after Junior and Cherry. Luigi's hair and handlebar mustache were all white now. He hunched over a silver folding walker and hobbled along on shuffling feet. Daisy wore thick glasses with brown cat-eye frames and carried a simple wooden cane. Cherry ran to greet them and cried on their shoulders.

Five days later, Cherry slipped her arms around Mario, and Junior held his small, bony hands. Luigi and Daisy placed their hands on his chest. He was gasping intermittently, yet calmer than anyone had ever seen him.

Murphtoad woke everybody up at four in the morning to tell them Mario looked to be near the end, and for the past three hours they gathered at his side.

"I love you. It's-a fine. I'm fine. I can't keep-a Peach waiting."

"Can you see her, daddy?" Cherry asked through her tears.

Mario nodded, his eyes growing faraway.

"Then go," Luigi clutched at his soft red pajama shirt. He sobbed, "Go be with-a your wife."

Daisy kissed Mario's cheek and wrapped an arm around Luigi. "Sleep, sweetheart. You earned your rest."

Junior scooted closer when Cherry started to cry. "Tell my dad hi when you see him."

"It's okay to go, daddy. I love you so much," Cherry murmured in his ear. "I'll be okay. I promise."

Mario stopped responding as he faded into unconsciousness. His lips turned blue, he gasped a few more times and was still. No long, dramatic, drawn out struggle, because Mario didn't mess around.

Nobody moved for a while. The silence blanketing the room rang eerily familiar.

"I think he's gone," Junior whispered, stunned.

"Daddy!" Cherry let out a wail and muffled her bawling in the pillow cradling Mario's head.

Luigi pressed a hand over his eyes. Daisy dialed on her phone.

Murphtoad came upstairs to confirm with his stethoscope.

"He died," he said simply, clasping his hands together. "I'm very sorry for your loss."

Mario didn't slide gently into death, he ran and leapt at it.

Cherry kissed his forehead and smoothed his white hair behind his ears. She turned to Luigi, Daisy and Junior with puffy eyes, and said, "He's with mom. Now nothing can hurt him."

Luigi took it the hardest. He sobbed on Mario's chest first, then Daisy's shoulder. Junior held Cherry while she hugged Mario's head to her chest. Daisy tried to hug everyone at once. They cried over Mario together, knowing their combined families happened because he stumbled into their world through a magical sewer pipe.

Mario's funeral was huge, as spectacular as Bowser's. Ludwig conducted music Cherry chose. Mario's favorite composer was Toadfield, so his compositions sent him off.

The morticians did a beautiful job on Mario. His funeral makeup wasn't so caked on like it was for Peach. Wendy sent over a facial gloss normally used on Koopas, and it gave his skin a slightly dewy look that mimicked life.

Cherry dressed her dad in his red shirt and denim overalls instead of formal royal regalia. He would have preferred his old clothes. She placed his favorite wrench between his folded hands. Luigi made sure his hair and mustache were combed to perfection. Daisy tucked a photo of Peach into his overalls pocket. Junior transferred his small body from the table to the clear crystal coffin without disturbing a single fold of his clothing. He weighed less than Lemmy.

The funeral concluded with a cortège through the whole Mushroom Kingdom, which took almost six hours. Cherry cried in Junior's arms the whole time.

Mario's family buried him on Peach's right side, leaving her surrounded by people who loved her. Cherry commissioned a golden grave statue, and soon Mario's smiling face joined Bowser and Peach on the hilltop.

She turned to Junior after seeing the statue for the first time.

"I get it now."

Junior pulled her close while she sobbed on his chest.

.o

It didn't stop at Mario.

Luigi slipped on black ice and broke his hip five years after Mario passed. Doctors found osteosarcoma in his bones that had already metastasized to his lymph nodes. His hip never healed, and he succumbed in Daisy's arms three months later. He was a hundred and five.

Daisy soldiered on for eight more months before ovarian cancer took her life. She never told anybody she had it, blaming her weight loss on a new diet and her pain on old age.

Stubborn Daisy wanted to face it all by herself, so she sent all her servants away and went upstairs to lay down on her bed. Larkspur and Amaryllis found her comatose and gasping, and held her until she slipped away. She was a hundred and five.

Cherry never knew Daisy was sick, and didn't find out she died until the day after. She bawled upon hanging up that horrible phone call and stood stonily silent at Junior's side as Daisy was buried on the hill next to Luigi, Mario, Peach and Bowser.

Larkspur and Amaryllis became the new rulers of Sarasaland. Yoshis lived up to three hundred years with good health, so they would have a long reign.

"She was my other mom," Cherry sniffled, "I never got to say goodbye to her, either! I hate this!"

She was depressed for months after. Daisy unintentionally trampled onto old trauma, because sometimes people trying to help ended up doing harm. Cherry never blamed her for it.

Sienna, Wendy, Pom-Pom and Aretha rushed to support Cherry while she grieved. Junior held her at night while she cried herself into sleep.

Cherry's side of the Koopa-Toadstool family was gone, all in the span of five years. She wasn't her usual self for two years.

And time spun forward.

.o

Lemmy had a heart attack at eighty-nine. He complained of an upset stomach all day long, and collapsed getting into bed that night. Scott called an ambulance and told them to warp Lemmy to Celine's floor in Junior's castle.

Billie couldn't be reached due to being in surgery. Lemmy's situation was so dire that Larry got called in to perform emergency quadruple bypass surgery on his own older brother. Stents were off the table because they would tear his sclerosed coronaries open.

Lemmy went in and out of v-fib after being removed from the bypass machine. Larry used internal defibrillator paddles to restore normal sinus rhythm.

It was just like Bowser— Lemmy emerged hooked up to all the life support equipment. He almost disappeared behind everything because of his small size.

Scott planted himself at his side. He played his piccolo for him, talked to him, washed his face, kissed him and held his hand.

Everybody rallied around Lemmy. Wolfgang brought his favorite glittery rainbow ball and placed it in Lemmy's hand.

"C'mon, Lemmy, you gotta pull through," Larry said tearfully.

After a month, he began to deteriorate. Rigorous neurological tests revealed him to be brain-dead, so the only things keeping him alive were the ventilator and IV nutrition.

Bowser survived the same thing by sheer luck. Lemmy didn't get lucky. The worst kicker was he might have lived if he sought help sooner, but, due to being autistic, he perceived his pain differently than most and the vague discomfort he complained about never registered to him as a massive heart attack.

Scott cussed Billie out when she delivered that awful news. He would apologize later and send her flowers to make up for it, but in the moment he was too compromised to think straight.

Nobody told Junior that the withdrawal of life support wasn't a silent, still end. Lemmy gasped like a fish out of water after being extubated, and he did it for twelve hours. Billie kept him medicated to prevent any perception of pain and checked in regularly.

Lemmy died while everybody except Scott and Junior slept around him. Scott was on the bed, cradling him. Junior stroked his rainbow Mohawk. The regular spikes on the monitor went into a sawtooth pattern that grew finer and finer until it flatlined. There were no dramatic spasms or rolling of the eyes. He exhaled and never inhaled again.

"It's okay, sweet stuff," Scott nuzzled their cheeks together, "I love you."

What Junior remembered the most was how tiny Lemmy looked in the bed. He seemed tinier lying on the straw at his wake. Scott bought a stylish gold tux to dress him in for the service.

His organs were so small that Junior accepted the responsibility of preparing them all for a thick stew. There was just enough to feed everyone who wanted to partake.

When the mortician prepared Lemmy's body for sealing in his shell, Junior carefully fit his favorite white ear defenders over his ears and tucked his gold glitter ball into his hands. The same kind of ball he wanted Bowser buried with.

Lemmy's burial instructions stated to put him wherever Iggy went. They had to wait a month for South Darklands Peak to erupt again and interred him in the path of the lava flow.

Scott almost threw himself into the flames. Roy yanked him back and held him while he wailed helplessly.

"You can't destroy yourself," he said, pulling Scott to his chest and hugging him. "Lemmy wouldn't want that."

.o

Lemmy's death traumatized Scott so much that he moved into a tiny studio apartment near the beach to escape the house where everything happened.

Despite what Roy said, he went on to destroy himself. It took six months to find him since he took off in the middle of the night without a trace. Larry happened to see him leave the Bumblebee, a small bee-themed bar between downtown Koopa City and the beachfront suburbs, and sneakily followed him to see which apartment he went into.

In those six months Scott descended hopelessly into alcoholism. Everybody tried their best to help, but Scott was a bitter, angry drunk, and drove almost everyone away.

Sienna went to his apartment after he didn't answer his phone for two weeks and found him vomiting blood all over his bedsheets. His living area stank like copper and rotten meat and his bed resembled a murder scene. Days-old brown stains marred most of the orange comforter and the gray rug on the floor. The whites of his eyes were bright yellow with jaundice.

Scott didn't recognize Sienna when he leaned over to vomit more blood into his lap. He opened the whiskey bottle next to him and finished what little was in it.

"Oh, honey." Sienna scooped Scott up and took him into the bathroom to wash off the mess crusted on his scales. He was covered in blood, urine and feces, and his bed fared no better.

"M'fine," Scott moaned. "Leave me alone."

He threw up more blood on the shower tiles. Bright red this time, not coffee grounds.

"Look what leaving you alone did. No. You need help," Sienna said.

She called an ambulance and held his hand while he cried out in confusion and pain. Scott crawled into her arms, his unfocused eyes slowly glazing over. She kissed his forehead, gently washed his face and held him.

"I'm sorry about everything," Scott whispered.

Sienna stroked his cheek. "Don't worry about it, dear. We'll take care of you."

Scott didn't gasp for breath or lift his head after heaving into the toilet trench. She pulled him against her chest again and his head flopped limply back over her arm, his gaping mouth stained crimson. He gasped weakly, reeking of blood.

"Scott?" Sienna jostled him as paramedics burst into the apartment.

"In here!" She shouted.

They were pumping Scott's chest when they took him away, and doctors pronounced him dead at the hospital. He was two days shy of turning eighty-nine.

An autopsy revealed alcohol poisoning, acute liver failure and a stomach lining eroded into bleeding ulcers. He died as suddenly as he did because all the vomiting ruptured his esophagus, and his body couldn't handle more blood loss.

Their final interaction ate at Junior. It happened the afternoon before Scott disappeared.

"Getting drunk like this isn't going to bring Lemmy back."

"I had two drinks. What're you crying about?"

"Lemmy was my brother, in case you forgot! Look at you! You pissed yourself and didn't notice you did it!"

"Tch, Wolfgang pees and craps himself all the time."

"Wolfgang doesn't feel bathroom signals. Come on, Scott. You're a mess."

"Hey, at least you still have family left to take care of you, go cry to them."

"I thought we were family."

"You know what? I don't care if you're the king here. Get the fuck out."

"Whatever. Have a nice life being drunk off your ass."

Junior left, slamming the apartment door. He would never see Scott alive after that.

"I'm sorry," Junior whispered tearfully to Scott's pale, motionless corpse. "If what I said made you drink more, I'm sorry."

Scott looked even tinier than Lemmy laid out on the hay at his wake. He was dressed in his concert attire, a black tuxedo.

Scott had no burial instructions. All he left behind were notes asking to donate his wheelchair to someone who needed one.

Sienna told Junior to bury him with Lemmy, so he did. Junior never forgot placing Scott's piccolo in his hands before pushing him into his shell for the final sealing.

Pom-Pom gave Scott's wheelchair to a Toad whose legs were amputated after a construction accident. He had no idea of the history echoing in those wheels.

Scott's death shook everybody. Wendy, Pom-Pom, Sienna, Aretha and Cherry cried on each other. Sienna had the hardest time, since he died in her arms. She comforted herself with the knowledge that he didn't die alone, as if it somehow made up for Morton.

"He was the best piccoloist I knew," Ludwig signed tearfully after his internment. "I remember introducing him to Lemmy. He was so funny, so warm, and incredibly talented. This is tragic beyond belief."

Junior spent weeks in a haze. Without Cherry, he would've done the same damage Scott did to himself after seeing Bowser die.

He shielded his family from the horror of Bowser's final moments, but he couldn't stop the horror of everyone else dying.

Cherry had no idea how much she saved him.

.o

Sienna left Serrated, which ended the band, and didn't play drums again for years.

Then, one morning out of the blue, she got up early, played a quick paradiddle and banged the cymbals twice.

Aretha awoke to her mom's drumming and went to wish her a happy hatch-day. She found her slumped backwards in the chair behind her drum set. The sticks were still in her hands, which rested on her lap.

Sienna died of natural causes on her ninety-fourth hatch-day.

Aretha kept a lock of her mother's coily white hair, which she wove around Morton's tooth, and wore it on a silver chain as a pendant for the rest of her life.

When it was time to bury Sienna next to Morton, Aretha kissed her and slid her drumsticks into her hands before she was sealed into her shell.

Pom-Pom, Cherry and Wendy surrounded Aretha in love while she grieved her mom. She was surpassingly okay after the ordeal of losing both her parents so suddenly.

"They lived good lives," Aretha told Roy once over dinner.

"Still hurts to lose 'em," Roy said back. "If you need anything, Pom-Pom and I are a phone call away."

Aretha teared up and finished her Cheep-Cheep fin soup.

.o

Black's hair transformed from inky black spikes to silver waves. He grew absentminded in his mid eighties. Sometimes he forgot his phone, or why he walked into rooms, or what day it was.

Then he completely forgot how to cook two days after his ninetieth hatch-day.

Then he got lost driving around in a city he drove ambulances through his whole adult life.

Then he forgot names and faces he knew for decades. He didn't know who Roy and Pom-Pom were during a visit, and managed to hide it until they referenced something he also didn't recall anymore.

Ludwig took Black to a doctor because that wasn't normal aging.

A battery of tests revealed dementia.

The day he received the diagnosis, Black sat Wolfgang down and signed to him, "My brain will forget everything, but my heart won't. Don't be afraid if I stop recognizing you. That doesn't mean I don't love you, I will always love you."

Ludwig— now eighty-eight years old with thinning white hair and wrinkles creasing his snout— put his whole life aside to be Black's caregiver.

They used the short window of Black still being cognizant to plan ahead. Junior and Cherry volunteered to take over as Wolfgang's caregivers in the event something happened to Ludwig before it was all over.

The dementia moved fast, chewing up Black's brain. His friendly personality didn't change, but he became more and more confused about time, place and people. He stopped recognizing Wolfgang as an adult because he kept expecting a two year old.

Wolfgang helped where he could, like retrieving Black when he wandered out of the penthouse thinking he had to go to work or getting Ludwig's attention whenever he became distressed.

Within five years, Black only recognized Ludwig, but he sure loved meeting all the 'new people' who kept coming by to hug and kiss him. He thought Junior was Bowser. Junior stopped correcting him because it was useless.

He had a hard time visiting. Seeing Black's steady decline broke his heart. Cherry went the most often, always bringing snacks because Black loved those.

"You look just like a little princess I know! Are you her mom?" Black signed over a slice of cherry pie.

"No." Cherry smiled sadly and signed back, "People say I have a friendly face."

"You do. It's a very pretty face!" Black gestured, his mouth full.

Black's biggest source of agitation was Jack, and it wasn't Jack's fault. He never remembered his brother went blind, so he would wave to get his attention, or sign something, and groan in frustration at the lack of response. The only trick that worked became Jack taking his glasses off, because Black knew he couldn't see without those.

There was the six week streak where Black got obsessed with rearranging the furniture in the house into the most illogical configurations. A couch across the hallway, the TV in the kitchen, end tables blocking the front door and vases spread across the floor. Ludwig and Wolfgang spent that morning putting everything back where it went only for Black to do it again later.

The whole family chipped in to help take care of Wolfgang during the times Black was still mobile. Wolfgang cooperated because he understood Ludwig needed to focus on Black.

Black's furniture moving distressed Wolfgang, so Junior and Cherry let him stay with them for the six weeks it took for that to stop.

Boom-Boom took him out to get chocolate ice cream one summer afternoon, and for three weeks he wanted that as dessert.

Roy and Pom-Pom took him to the beach, and he had fun collecting shells and lining them up in neat rows.

Larry took him on a Kart track and gave him the experience of driving a Kart. Wolfgang crashed immediately, and laughed.

Wendy and Jack took him overnight once, and he remembered the bathroom they put him in when he was found as a child. He slept on the floor in it.

By nine years post-diagnosis, Black lost his ability to communicate altogether. He signed gibberish, and shouted when he wanted something or felt lost in his own penthouse. Most of the time, he cried out of nowhere.

Wolfgang tried giving him his PECS cards, but that venture proved unsuccessful. Black couldn't grasp the meaning between the card for water and a glass of water.

Ten years following the diagnosis, Black was so incapacitated that he stopped moving, eating or drinking. Those glorious, bulging muscles he spent his life perfecting withered away to scales over bones.

Ludwig developed relentless headaches that he ignored because he never wanted to be away from Black or Wolfgang for long. They had enough to worry about without including him in their anxieties too.

"Have you seen a doctor for that?" Larry signed during a video call.

"It's the stress," Ludwig gestured back, eyes drooping from the obvious pain. "Black doesn't do well if he can't find me. He's frightened all the time, like Wolfgang was when we first brought him home."

"Never heard of a tension headache lasting three weeks," Larry pointed out.

That spring, Ludwig invited KMDN journalists seeking to interview notable deaf Koopas. They brought a camera crew into his house for a short interview about his life as a composer and conductor, so he talked at length about his life, his personal losses and his current situation. He had to stop twice for Black and once for Wolfgang. They were gracious, telling him to take his time.

After they left, he sat down at the kitchen table and massaged the sides of his head in an attempt to stop the pain.

Everything changed three days later. Wolfgang woke before the sun to the sound of Ludwig throwing up in the bathroom. He left his room to see Black, who had been flaccid and unresponsive for weeks, grab onto Ludwig's wrist as he climbed back into bed.

"I don't want to go alone," Black signed.

"Let me prepare," Ludwig signed back. "Will you wait for me?"

Black nodded and closed his eyes. They kissed each other for the first time in a long while. It was slow, tearful and tender.

Ludwig ran to the bathroom to vomit six more times in rapid succession. He only put one hearing aid in, picked up his phone and called the rest of the Koopa family to say he loved them. Nobody else was awake at this hour, so he left voicemails. When he spoke, his voice slurred more and more incomprehensibly.

He set his phone aside, took his hearing aid out and placed it by its twin on the nightstand. His left eyelid drooped half-shut. Nothing about his face or movements looked right.

Wolfgang waved from the doorway, attracting his dad's attention. Ludwig took his hand and led him into the kitchen. When he walked, his left leg didn't move as well as his right. He sat at the table for a moment, clutching his head and sweating. Wolfgang patted his arm, his way of asking what was wrong.

Ludwig didn't answer, except to look sadly at him. He held up a "one moment" finger and prepared Wolfgang's breakfast— apple cinnamon oatmeal with iced green tea. Food and a drink he knew Wolfgang would eat, but didn't like as much as ash oatmeal or orange juice.

He struggled to transfer the spoonfuls of oatmeal between the bowl and Wolfgang's mouth. Twice, he stopped to throw up in the sink. He dropped the bowl while tidying the kitchen table.

Wolfgang signed for a change, since he soiled his briefs. Ludwig took far longer than usual, his face twisted in pain the whole time. The smell made him vomit in the sink again, all bile. That never happened before. He cleaned up and washed his hands afterward.

Wolfgang stroked his dad's soft hair, trying to soothe him.

"It's not you, it's my headache," Ludwig signed.

Daylight crept into the window. The distant mountains were black silhouettes like teeth under the brightening sky.

Wolfgang watched Ludwig through worried eyes. Ludwig didn't put his glasses on, insert his hearing aids, make breakfast for Black, prepare coffee, or nibble on a bit of ash toast. Those were routine acts he did every morning in that order, why change it now?

He tapped Ludwig's arm again, whining softly in brewing distress. Something was wrong.

Ludwig stopped washing dishes and pulled him against his chest with cold, wet hands. Confused, Wolfgang patted his head, which seemed to be causing him terrible agony.

Ludwig's signs were slow and sloppy, as if his arms and fingers didn't want to work. Especially the left. It flopped more than it signed.

"Black is dying, and now I am, too. This is fate. I have to go with him, Wolfgang, but it means I'm about to leave you. I'm sorry, my love."

"Why?" Wolfgang signed.

"I have to help him reach the Great Beyond. It's nothing you did wrong. It's not your fault. He gets lost going places, and he needs my help to find his way. Do you understand?"

Wolfgang shed a tear and nodded, gesturing, "Music. Live forever."

Ludwig's left hand kept drifting lower than his right. "Yes. Together we will live forever through music."

Another tear escaped onto Wolfgang's cheek. "Love, dad. Us. Love, always."

Tears filled Ludwig's eyes. His signing was barely comprehensible, like his fingers weighed too much to lift.

"I love you, too, more than I can say, and so does Black. Be strong, my precious son from the moon."

Wolfgang embraced him, breathing in the petrichor smell of his hair. Ludwig kissed his cheek many times and eased out of the hug. He stroked Wolfgang's face one last time before he returned to the bedroom where Black lay dying.

His left leg collapsed under his weight. He fell. The thud shook the penthouse. Pain wrenched a shout from his throat. He sobbed once, holding his head, and tried to crawl along the hallway floor.

Wolfgang scooped Ludwig up bridal style and carried him into the master bedroom, which held the massive blue bed Black rested on. The walls housed the stories of their lives— framed pictures of smiling Ludwig holding his baton at ready, Black winking as he raised a thousand-pound barbell over his head with his bulging arms, both of them kissing Wolfgang's cheeks, and endless photos from their wedding.

Ludwig's left arm and leg went limp as Wolfgang laid him on his side facing Black. He used his functional right arm to draw Black against his chest, where he kissed his face and hand.

Black opened his eyes. They were focused. He was present. His gaze moved to Wolfgang first.

"I love you," he signed slowly.

Wolfgang signed back, "Love, dad. Music. Live forever."

Black's eyes teared up. He nodded. His gaze shifted to Ludwig and softened.

Ludwig signed to him, one-handed, "I'll see you where shadows do not fall."

Black's hands moved, signing back, "Together."

"Together." Ludwig laid his head on the pillow.

Black nuzzled him, closed his eyes again and continued heaving air in slow, gurgling spurts. Ludwig groaned and squirmed a few times. They lay cheek to cheek, limbs entangled as if they just made love.

Wolfgang sat on the foot of the bed, watching them. He wasn't scared. They were together, and they weren't afraid, so he didn't see a need to be.

Suddenly, Ludwig's face sagged awkwardly and his limbs stiffened, pushing him away from Black towards the edge of the bed. His eyes flew wide open, bulging, unseeing. Convulsions followed, just like Iggy used to do.

Wolfgang grasped the top of Ludwig's shell, rolled him back to the center of the bed with Black and interlocked their hands. They had to keep touching, he would not let them separate.

Ludwig kept seizing. Froth gathered around his mouth. His hands wanted to curl inward towards his chest, but Wolfgang held onto his wrist and kept his hand in contact with Black's.

The jerking motions stopped, yet his muscles remained unnaturally stiff. His eyes rolled back, his nostrils flared and his jaw twitched twice in rapid succession. Black's eyes stayed shut and his expression serene. He knew he wasn't alone.

Sunrise poured light through the window, bathing their large wedding photo in gilded luminescence. They were jumping over the lava, beaming in joy at starting their lives together.

Black groaned low in his throat and his arm contracted towards his chest. Ludwig convulsed again, more violent than last time. Wolfgang clung onto their wrists, holding their left hands entwined because death seemed determined to separate them.

Ludwig stilled, his head sliding forward with white hair trailing behind it on the pillow like a comet's tail until his snout rested against Black's forehead. Neither took a breath after that.

The pulses in their wrists stopped throbbing at exactly the same time. The second they were still, a love beyond comprehension shot up Wolfgang's arms, enveloped him in a maelstrom of hope and whirled away into the ether.

He laid their joined hands between their bodies and retrieved the stethoscope Black had, but couldn't use. Nothing made a sound as he positioned the earpieces in his auricles and rested the chest piece on Ludwig's chest first, then Black's.

They asked each other out and proposed simultaneously, it made sense that they flew hand-in-hand into the Great Beyond together like they hopped over the lava after getting married.

Black was a hundred years old, Ludwig was ninety-eight, and they died on their seventieth wedding anniversary.

The rectangle of sunlight shifted off Black's and Ludwig's wedding photo, casting it once more in shadow.

Wolfgang set the stethoscope aside, kissed their peaceful faces and stroked their gray hair.

They were together, free.

.o

Wendy awoke to a dozen texts from Wolfgang, all the same word.

Help.

She and Jack rushed to the penthouse where they discovered Wolfgang beating himself bloody on the living room floor. Jack called Junior because nothing calmed him down and he needed backup.

Junior and Cherry got there via the warp zone. Cherry assisted Jack and Wendy in soothing Wolfgang. It wasn't like Ludwig to leave him in distress like this. Something happened to Black, that had to be it.

Junior charged into the master bedroom and froze at the sight of two pale dead bodies embracing on the rumpled blue bedding. Their reflection shone on the wedding photo across from the foot of the bed.

He felt their necks for pulses, stumbled backwards and hugged himself. Ludwig's eyes almost bulged out of their sockets, and they were weirdly flat in the front from the lack of blood pressure. Black's jaw gaped in a way it never did in life. They appeared to be looking at each other.

"They're dead!" Junior screamed. "Ludwig! Black! They're both dead!"

Jack appeared in the doorway, eyes wide from trying to see even though he hadn't been able to for decades.

"Both of them?"

"Yeah," Junior tearfully led him to the bed, voice shaking. "Here."

Jack threw his cane down, collapsed and bawled, his fingers tangling in their white hair. Junior pressed a hand against his mouth. They cried over their brothers together.

Wolfgang calmed down enough to stop punching himself in the head. He cut his snout on his claws and bruises marred his face. Wendy and Cherry changed his briefs, washed the blood off his nose and asked him if he was okay.

He typed on his tablet, "Dads, home. Sad, gone, free."

Wendy hugged him tightly, crying on his shoulder. "We're all sad, Wolfie."

Cherry went to see Ludwig and Black after Jack and Junior emerged, both with blotchy faces from crying. She wept when she saw how their hands were interlocked, their black wedding rings forming a lemniscate.

Jack handled calling Roy, Pom-Pom, Aretha, and Larry to notify them of what happened.

The house was chaotic. Wolfgang curled up next to the piano with his hands over his ears. Wendy gave him his ear defenders to wear. Everybody kept sobbing.

Junior checked his voicemails and found the message from Ludwig. His older brother's speech slurred so much it was too garbled to understand. Only the first sentence made any sense.

"Junior, little brother, I love you more than you know and I'm sorry about the pain you're going to feel."

The voicemail on Wendy's phone was completely inscrutable. Only her name sounded clear.

Cherry came out of the bedroom, a hand over her mouth. Wolfgang tucked her head under his chin and hugged her. Ludwig used to do that with Black.

Jack leaned over to murmur in Junior's ear. "Wolfgang isn't going to let the retrieval team take them away separately."

"Yeah, it's gonna be interesting."

Wendy went into the bedroom next. She emerged, weeping openly, her phone pressed to her ear.

In the end, it wasn't an ordeal. The compassionate retrieval team slid Black and Ludwig into an extra large body bag, still on their sides facing each other. They let Wolfgang see his dads together in the same bag. Ludwig's hair was a rat's nest. Wolfgang smoothed it with his hands and kissed his cheek. He turned to Black, cupping his face in his palm as he leaned in to kiss his forehead.

The retrieval team zipped the bag shut once Wolfgang walked away. They wove through the penthouse and eased the gurney out to the warp zone.

Wendy cried after they left. Jack washed the dish Ludwig left in the sink. The kitchen smelled like apple cinnamon oatmeal.

"I guess Ludwig got confused. Whatever killed him must've happened in his brain." Jack sniffled, holding up the bowl. "Wolfgang doesn't go for apple-cinnamon when he has other choices."

He pulled another box down from the cupboard and held it close to his good eye.

"Yup, this is a box of ash oatmeal."

Wolfgang groaned low in his throat and laid his head in Wendy's lap.

Cherry wrapped her arms around Junior's neck. He buried his nose in her hair and tried to content himself with not knowing.

.o

An autopsy revealed Ludwig died of a catastrophic hemorrhagic stroke caused by a burst basilar artery aneurysm. Coroners said he would've had the most painful headache of his life due to increasing intracranial pressure. The blood squirted into the right side of his brain first, so it began to swell and die off, leading to left-sided deficits. Blood filled his skull as the rupture worsened and the rest of his brain swelled until his cerebrospinal fluid had no way to drain out. Coroners found his brain ventricles swollen totally shut and his cerebral cortex was so inflamed it looked smooth. Blood leaked into his sinuses and around his spinal cord, trickling all the way to the base of his tail.

They called it miraculous that he stayed conscious and coherent long enough to prepare his high-support autistic son breakfast and feed it to him. That hit Junior the hardest. Ludwig knew he was having a fatal stroke when he woke up that morning. He was in tremendous agony, yet he spent his last hour calling everyone to say he loved them and feeding Wolfgang breakfast before laying down to die by Black's side.

It reminded Junior of Bowser comforting him as he suffered the pain of his final heart attack. The amount of love it took to do that…

Junior cried thinking about it. He cried again thinking of the pain Ludwig suffered through.

Everyone found a voicemail from him, and each one sounded worse than the previous.

Larry's was the most understandable.

"Larry, you will cure Crash. I feel it in my bones. I love you, little brother, go save those lives."

Roy got his voicemail last, judging by the compared timestamps. There were no discernible words other than "I love—", the rest was incoherent syllables and mumbling.

Everybody looked at each other, realizing they were listening to Ludwig have a killer stroke and telling them goodbye, and only Larry got to hear what he wanted to say.

Junior thought back to the last time he saw Ludwig and Black alive.

His oldest brother was draped across the couch with a cold cloth over his eyes, desperate to soothe his headache.

"Getting old hurts," Ludwig had said, lifting the cloth.

Junior remembered chuckling at that before going to see Black. Black was motionless and rarely opened his eyes anymore. His face looked plastered to his skull, his dark eyes sunken into their sockets.

Junior changed his soiled vent bag. Black's eyes were open when he came out of the bathroom after washing his hands. Junior sat on the edge of the bed, smiled and took his hand.

"I love you," he signed.

Black gazed at him. The language didn't reach him, but the warmth behind it did. He grasped onto Junior's hand. They could still connect through emotion. Junior stroked the side of his face until his eyes drifted shut again.

He kissed his forehead, went out to Ludwig and kissed his cheek.

"I changed Black. He's comfortable."

"Thank you."

Ludwig suddenly uncurled from the couch and enveloped Junior in a hug.

"Take care of yourself, little brother," he signed one-handed.

Junior returned the embrace, because Ludwig needed it.

He chose to speak rather than sign back. "I hope your head feels better."

They exchanged smiles and parted ways for the last time.

Ludwig's head feels a lot better. He's dead, he can't feel pain.

Junior and Cherry took Wolfgang into their castle and loved him like their own son.

They set his food PECs cards on their wall hanging by the refrigerator and showed him where to find it.

Wolfgang settled comfortably into what used to be Ludwig's and Black's guest bedroom in the castle. He brought the glittery yellow star night light, Ludwig's piano, Black's medical bag, all of his stim toys and boxes full of sheet music with him.

He plugged the night light into the outlet above the bed by himself. By some miracle it still lit up after almost a century. Sometimes he laid in bed, blankly staring at it while sucking his thumb. Nobody was allowed to touch it or turn it off.

Wolfgang spent hours upon hours outside by the fountain, patting the water, staring at the spray and splashing around. When he wasn't outside, he was making noise on the piano. Beautiful noise. Junior never interrupted his escapades because it offered him comfort.

Sometimes Wolfgang played at odd hours, like one o'clock in the morning. Junior didn't mind, it became a nice sound to wake up and fall back asleep to.

As the days passed, he noticed Wolfgang was weirdly calm about losing his dads. The coroners said Ludwig's final moments were extremely disturbing. Wolfgang made it clear he saw the whole thing happen, yet he remained reticent about it when asked. Nobody pressed the issue with him.

Then, unprovoked, he typed, "Not awake. Shake. Iggy. Not awake. Dad. Shake."

Cherry had to walk away to cry where he wouldn't see.

Junior kept Ludwig's and Black's hands interlocked while bathing their bodies. He put the sponge in Wolfgang's hand and guided him through the motion of washing their faces. Wolfgang caught on and did that by himself.

Wendy shooed everyone away from Ludwig and styled his silver hair. He was particular about it and she made sure he looked as wonderful as he did on his wedding day. She cried when she found a few strands of blue that never grayed.

With Black, she used hairspray and her comb to give him his spikes again, albeit white instead of inky black.

For the wake, they were dressed in their wedding tuxedos, and laid out together in the same bed of hay with their hands clasped and their faces turned towards each other.

The most painful thing was taking off their wedding rings. They asked for Wolfgang to have them. Neither ring fit around his huge fingers, so he wore them on his magnificent horns instead.

Roy hosted the wake dinner. Wolfgang received Ludwig's and Black's hearts— as per their wills— and Roy cooked the heart steak strips he chose from the cookbook. He helped as best he could by rubbing the blood and wine into the meat and closing the lid on the sizzling pan when Roy told him to.

At the wake meal, he signed for bites from every dish, and everybody fed him a piece of something they made.

Junior saw Black's brain briefly, and he didn't recognize it as a brain at first because it looked so shrunken and atrophied. Dementia was a horrible thing.

Ludwig's looked worse, all engorged. Blood went everywhere as Junior cut it into slices for the blood soup he intended to make. He swore he heard music when he ate that soup later.

Wolfgang insisted Ludwig be interred with his hearing aids in his ears and his conductor's baton clasped in his hands. He made certain Black wore his old medic helmet. They were laid to rest together in the lava outside Bowser's old castle.

When asked if he was okay, he typed his cryptic answer, "They are."

The organs from two Koopas provided enough food to feed the rest of the family for nearly a month. Wolfgang wanted something of theirs at every meal he ate.

Junior waited until after the funeral to inform the public. Ludwig's death made the news since he was a well-known composer whose name turned up on everything. The KMDN aired documentaries tracing his life for months after.

In their last interview with him in his home, the Toad host signed in perfect Koopa Sign, "You have a dramatic face when you conduct your symphonies."

As she gestured, the interview cut to several shots of Ludwig's face and his phantasmagoria of expressions as he led his orchestra through his creations.

He chuckled after the shot cut back to him, so she must have shown that super cut to him on her phone.

"My orchestra responds to my face as much as my hands. One of my favorite icebreakers with new orchestra members is to keep my hands at my sides and only use my expression to direct the tone of their playing. The veterans know what's going on, but it's always fun watching the new ones figure it out."

There was a jump cut, followed by the reporter asking, "What is your greatest accomplishment?"

Ludwig rubbed his forehead, yet another indicator of the growing aneurysm about to kill him. He smiled through the pain, pushed his glasses up on his nose and signed back, "I understand what love is."

The reporter leaned in, eyebrows raised and gestures nimble. "Can you elaborate on that?"

Wolfgang walked into the shot with his thumb in his mouth. He sat on the floor by Ludwig's legs and rested his head on his thigh.

Ludwig's expression softened as he smoothed Wolfgang's feathery hair. He freed his hands to sign, "My dad taught me what love is, but I understand it because of my son. Love is the most beautiful thing we can bring into the world. Love is what stays behind when we leave, and it's what matters the most above everything else. If you can't give anything else in your life, give love."

Ludwig kissed his fingertip and tapped it on Wolfgang's nose. Wolfgang giggled, closing his eyes.

The interview faded to a monochrome photo of Ludwig in profile with his baton raised and his face intense as he conducted a concert. His black wedding ring matched the black coat of his immaculate tuxedo. Underneath the photo, his hatch date and death date.

Reporters harassed anyone who knew Ludwig, including Wolfgang. Wendy threatened to send an airship after their headquarters if they didn't leave the royal family alone, and they stopped.

It was a month before anyone felt strong enough to visit the penthouse again. Junior couldn't do it. Cherry, Larry, Roy, Pom-Pom, Aretha, Jack and Wendy handled cleaning it out.

Ludwig willed all of his tuxedos to Glitterbomb, to be sold as used. They were in pristine condition, like new.

.o

Two months after the funeral, Junior cooked up a huge pot of apple-cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast. It was the last box and he wanted to hog it all to himself.

Wolfgang burst in, hurled the pot out the open window and went into the most violent meltdown Junior ever saw him have. Aggression, head-punching, screeching, thrashing and flailing. It took Junior, Cherry, Aretha, Pom-Pom, Wendy, Jack, Larry and Roy four hours to stop him from injuring himself. He bawled nonstop in their arms for the rest of the day.

Jack got a concussion after an elbow to the jaw nearly knocked him unconscious. Wolfgang never realized he did it. He was covered in bruises, nicks and had a swollen eyelid from striking himself.

Cherry pulled up the old videos of Bowser reading childens' books. She held it in front of Wolfgang and he slowly began to relax.

"Sheesh, what started that?" Larry asked after Wolfgang laid down on the living room floor with her phone.

"I made oatmeal." Junior shrugged.

"Apple-cinnamon? Ludwig's house smelled like it the morning he and Black died." Aretha furrowed her brow.

Cherry gasped. "You're right!"

"That's it." Larry snapped his fingers and pointed at Aretha.

"I think you're onto something," Roy chimed in, adjusting his shades. "That's a flavor Wolfgang doesn't go for if there are other choices. Doesn't he freak out over sensory associations between things that upset him?"

"Yes!" Pom-Pom leaned forward. "He couldn't stand being around women for a year because of what his mother did to him. Remember?"

"I remember punching her," Aretha muttered, examining her claws, "I'd do it again. That bitch."

Junior and Cherry locked eyes, both coming to the same realization.

Ludwig wasn't confused because of his unfolding stroke. He prepared that flavor deliberately so Wolfgang wouldn't be put off of his favorite breakfast by its association with death.

Following that, Junior banned apple-cinnamon oatmeal from the castle.

Cherry sat alone in the living room after soothing Wolfgang. Those old videos of Bowser reading Peter Piranha books still worked even though he was midway into his forties.

"You okay?" Junior crouched beside her.

This was the same living room Iggy went into status epilepticus in. She rearranged the furniture— moved the couch by the fireplace, the TV under the window, the coffee table closer to the bookcase, and she changed the throw pillow covers to purple satin— to try and erase the image his death left behind.

Cherry looked up at Junior, eyes welling over. "Is there a point where grief stops hurting and goes numb?"

Junior didn't have an answer. He held her while she sobbed quietly into her hands.

.o

Wolfgang stopped eating with his usual enthusiasm, and Junior noticed he wasn't leaving anything solid in his briefs. His bowel movements happened as he woke up to start his day or just after breakfast, so his morning changes were often messy.

Junior never flinched at taking over this part of Wolfgang's care. Poop didn't bother Cherry either, so she helped. Wolfgang stayed standing to be changed since he wore Runners pull-ups that only needed the sides taken apart when he made solid messes.

Today, he picked the dark gray ones. They looked like boxer shorts at a glance. Someone had to stare very hard to see the Velcro tabs at his hips.

"Here comes the wipe," Cherry said. "Hey, you're not pooping. Are you okay?"

Wolfgang grunted noncommittally. He stepped into the clean briefs she held open for him and hunched over while she slipped her hands under his shell to scoot the back above the base of his tail.

That morning, he barely ate three bites of his favorite ash oatmeal. He turned away from the spoon and walked off to dink around on his portable keyboard.

Junior offered him food throughout the day, which he refused. He accepted drinks, especially his favorite orange juice, and drank a glass of broth.

"Is your stomach upset?" Cherry asked him.

"Yes," Wolfgang typed, and that was all the answer he could give.

Cherry worried alongside Junior about the sudden change in appetite.

Five days later, he still hadn't done anything solid in his briefs, and he only ate a few bites of breakfast before walking away. He paced the halls, patting the sides of his head and groaning low in his throat.

Then Wolfgang woke up wailing at four-thirty in the morning, scaring Junior and Cherry awake. They found him punching himself in the head, crying and stomping his feet.

Nothing soothed him, Junior and Cherry tried everything. He threw up something brown next to his bed, he screamed in a high-pitched keening and he curled up on his belly as if protecting it. Anytime somebody touched him, he snapped his jaws like he intended to bite.

"He's in pain," Cherry whispered in Junior's ear. Turning to Wolfgang, she asked, "Wolfgang, can you show us what hurts?"

He screeched in her face.

With no idea of what to do next, Junior called Celine's floor.

Israel came up via the elevator. Wolfgang growled at him, teeth bared. Nothing convinced him to let the medic look at him. Israel asked him to stick his nose in a mask attached to a small tank. The gas knocked Wolfgang out in one breath.

"That's going to last thirty minutes."

"Okay." Cherry took charge. "He's refusing solid food, and he hasn't pooped at all in the last five days. Whatever the problem is, I think it's in his digestive system."

"Gotcha. Any new pica issues?"

Junior shook his head. "No, he doesn't eat things that aren't food."

"Well, that rules out an intestinal blockage by a foreign object."

Israel pulled out his stethoscope and listened to Wolfgang's abdomen. He moved it lower, sideways and towards the center again.

"Hm, I don't hear any bowel sounds. Let's get him downstairs and look at this, okay?"

Junior swallowed past the rising lump in his throat. His mind spun through the possibilities, everything from bowel ischemia to cancerous tumors blocking off his intestines.

Cherry wrapped her arms around his bicep and squeezed.

Israel called the team. George, Michael, Peter and Gabriel arrived with the gurney. They rolled Wolfgang on— he was so huge he took up the whole thing— and rushed him down the elevator.

Junior rubbed his eyes and tried not to sob. He couldn't lose Wolfgang. Not now.

Cherry ran up to get her robe since she only wore a tiny purple negligee. She followed Junior downstairs where they worked Wolfgang over. Drawing blood, checking him for injuries and hurrying him off for X-rays.

Israel led them to the staff lounge since it was empty at the moment. Neither Cherry nor Junior wanted any snacks, but Cherry accepted water.

"You'll hear from us as soon as we know something," said Israel.

The minutes began their slow, plodding march.

Cherry paced, sipping her water.

"Please, please, please," Junior whispered to the universe.

Nearly an hour went by before Peter came in, expression bright and steps springy.

"It's a bowel impaction, the same problem he had as a toddler. His entire colon is blocked up. No doubt it's causing him a lot of pain. He woke up punching himself and we saw some fecal vomiting. We gave him morphine to control the pain."

He breathed in, jiggling his clipboard. "Hey, King Junior? It'll be okay. An enema will clear this up."

"Nothing is wrong with his intestines?" Junior asked, mind still spinning.

"Nope. No hernias, volvulus or intussusception. His bowel is full of stool that's too large and hard to pass through."

Nodding, Junior breathed in through his nose and let it out from his mouth, trying his utmost to slow his brain down.

"He, um…" Cherry grabbed Peter's arm and pulled him close to say it in his ear, "His mother molested him as a toddler, it's suspected he had something forced into his vent."

Peter's eyes hardened. "I worked with rape survivors back at Koopa General. Some of 'em were kids. Awful stuff."

"Yeah." Junior scowled. "I'll be right back."

He hurried upstairs to get Wolfgang's favorite red chew tube, his flickering colored egg light and his green vibrating bone pillow.

Nurses ensconced Wolfgang in a quiet room at the far end of the hall. Morphine sedated most people, but he wasn't most people. Wolfgang's tenebrous growls vibrated the walls.

Junior prepared himself before stepping inside and setting Wolfgang's stim toys in the basket under the gurney.

"Mmhmm, I hear you," Peter said. His smooth voice stayed even and calm. "We have to soften up your poop so you can poop it out, and this is the best way. This nozzle here? It attaches to a bag with liquid medicine in it, and I have to squirt it into your intestines to soften up the hard piece that's blocking you up. It'll fix your stomach-ache. Putting the medicine in feels bad, but you'll feel better after it helps you go poop. I promise."

Wolfgang's nostrils smoked. He breathed fire for the first time in all the years Junior knew him. A wide, uncontrolled flame that scattered everybody in the room. Nobody got hurt, but the walls were scorched and a plastic tray melted on the counter.

Peter gestured at Israel. Israel injected Versed into the IV catheter. Wolfgang didn't see him do it, so he didn't know who to 'blame' for it. He blinked sleepily and relaxed on the gurney with his chin resting on his hands.

"I'm sorry," Peter stroked Wolfgang's hair. "We have to do this, big guy. I promise it's not to be mean."

Wolfgang whimpered, trying one final time to squirm away. Cherry wiped tears off her face.

Junior rubbed his shoulder. "We're right here. We wouldn't let him do this if we knew he was hurting you, I promise. Here."

He touched the red chew tube to Wolfgang's snout and watched him take it in his teeth. A good start, but not distracting enough. He twisted the egg light until it flickered slowly through every rainbow color, drawing Wolfgang's eyes to fixate on it. Finally, he switched on the vibrating bone pillow and rested it against the back of Wolfgang's neck.

Wolfgang's pink eyes filled with tears. He whined, pleading. Peter grasped his tail near the bottom of his vent.

"Wolfgang, I'm going to insert it. I'm sorry that it won't feel nice. I'll count, okay? By the time we get to ten, it'll be in. Relax your vent for me. It'll be over real soon. One, two, three…"

Peter carefully inserted the long nozzle into Wolfgang's vent, shifted it upward and pushed it the rest of the way in. Wolfgang shrieked around the chew tube in his mouth, no doubt experiencing horrible flashbacks.

"…eight, nine, ten. There you go. The nozzle is in position. You're doing real good, Wolfgang." Peter clicked the roller clamp. "Now, I'm going to start squirting in the medicine. It might feel gross. Here we go."

"Dad! Dad! Dad!" Wolfgang signed over and over. Sobs heaved his whole body. The agony twisting his face cut Junior to pieces inside.

Junior bit his lip so he wouldn't bawl. He moved the colorful light egg into Wolfgang's sight again.

"It'll be over soon. Hang in there, buddy."

Cherry clutched Wolfgang's hand. "You're being so brave right now."

Wolfgang's screeching slowed to whimpers and sniffles, like he finally understood it wasn't Joanne trying to hurt him.

Peter emptied half the bag. He gave Junior a little nod, indicating it was going well.

"You're doing so good!" Cherry squeezed Wolfgang's hand. "I know this feels awful. I'm sorry that it feels so awful. But look how brave you're being!"

Wolfgang stared at his light egg as it shifted through rainbow colors. She dabbed his runny nose with a paper towel and brushed his feathery hair backwards off his bushy eyebrows. He moved the vibrating bone pillow under his chin while chewing furiously on his chew tube.

"I'm taking the nozzle out now. One, two, three, done!" Peter withdrew the enema nozzle and showed it to Wolfgang. "See? It's out. You did it!"

Wolfgang shot Peter a look that could melt iron. Somehow he managed to suck his thumb and keep his chew tube in his mouth.

Peter chuckled softly, "Don't blame you, that wasn't fun. Now I'm going to set a timer. You can try to poop when it dings."

His biggest mistake was not putting briefs on Wolfgang, but briefs were not going to contain the oncoming disaster.

Forty-five minutes later, faster than the recommended hour, Wolfgang climbed off the gurney and unleashed hell.

Poor Hathatoad, she tried to get the bedpan under him to no avail. A pitiful metal bedpan had no hope of containing the torrential turd-tastrophe. Junior never saw anything like it!

Wolfgang only strained once to pass the three-foot-long monster log responsible for the blockage. It was as big as his arm.

Cherry gagged a little watching that leave his body.

His eyes fell half-shut in obvious relief. Without the blockage in the way, all the trapped gas behind it escaped. Nobody in history was going to top those tuba-blast farts, they even put Bowser's to shame.

The timer dinged as he finished relieving himself.

His epic code brown shut that room down. Toads and Koopa Troopas in hazmat suits went in to mop up and disinfect the room. Junior was glad he wasn't them.

George peeked in, slammed the door and dry heaved.

Junior took pictures of the malodorous disaster zone because he couldn't believe his eyes. Not one white tile showed up. Wolfgang coated the whole floor! It was as unreal as Morton's legendary ceiling puke after his first angiogram.

Wolfgang left brown footprints when Junior led him to the patient showers. He giggled, chirped and made fart noises with his mouth the whole way, already showing signs of feeling better.

"Did that just happen?" Cherry asked. She raised her eyebrows as she twisted the water temperature dial before turning on the mobile shower head.

"Yup." Junior laughed at the absurdity. "Wolfgang, you are King Shit. How's your stomach now?"

Wolfgang grunted, sucked his thumb and let Junior spray his hair to wet it. Junior and Cherry set his stim toys outside the shower while they scrubbed him clean.

Aretha came downstairs after sleeping through the whole ordeal.

"Uh, what did I miss?"

"A lot." Junior and Cherry said at the same time.

Wolfgang flapped his hands, which flicked water everywhere, and hummed contentedly.

The enema gave him the stinky squirts and he needed a lot of changes for the next three days. Cherry fed him gentle foods, like bananas, ash toast, chicken soup, Piranha leaf tea and crackers.

On the fourth day he acted like his usual self again, content and delighted to eat his favorites at mealtimes.

Junior breathed a relieved sigh. This medical disaster didn't end in somebody dead. It still took him a week to fully calm down.

Wolfgang was so proud of his giant poop that he called himself King Shit for weeks. He sent Roy, Larry and Wendy pictures of the room he wrecked with zero context.

That's massive! Larry texted back.

EW, WOLFIE! I'M EATING BREAKFAST! WHY? Wendy replied.

HAHAHA, nice one! Roy sent back.

Wolfgang's Shit-Bomb became a hilarious story of legend on Celine's floor, one meant to be passed down the nursing generations alongside Morton's side-splitting Puke-Pocalypse.

.o

Wolfgang composed a symphony to tell the world how much he loved his dads. He called it The Fountain. Music was his main communication tool, offering a glimpse into the esoteric turn of his mind.

Junior cried the first time he heard him play it all the way through on his piano. The love was there, so obvious in every note and chord.

But Wolfgang didn't transcribe on paper the same way Ludwig and Bowser did. It all happened in his head.

Aretha wrote a program on his tablet that responded to his piano playing and placed the notation accordingly. Wolfgang went through to manually edit. Little things, like placing fermatas, accents or tenutos, changing dynamics or adjusting rhythms. One part required a very precise rubato ending in a fermata, he was stubborn about people heeding that direction.

Still-living members of Ludwig's old orchestra piled together for it. They were hesitant initially, when they saw how Wolfgang behaved. Aretha gave them the rundown on him, and how their rehearsals would work. Wolfgang beat out time using the baton, and Aretha provided the expressive gestures, entrances and cutoffs. If Wolfgang didn't like something and wanted it done again, he stopped, waved his hands and stared at the section he heard a problem in.

Within a week the orchestra acclimated to the arrangement and worked with Wolfgang as faithfully as they did Ludwig.

Wolfgang held the symphony in the Koopa City Convention Center, the same place Ludwig held his.

Junior never forgot how it took himself, Cherry and Aretha to get Wolfgang dressed in his charcoal gray coattail tuxedo. Aretha, who wore a white pants suit in an identical style, combed his hair into a slick ponytail. He looked stunning, and she was a dream.

Before the symphony, Aretha appeared outside the curtain with a microphone in her hands.

"Everyone, your attention please."

Once the audience focused on her, she said, "This will be a slightly different performance than you're used to. I ask that you not applaud as you normally would. Instead, use deaf applause."

She demonstrated by pivoting her hands as if waving.

"Wolfgang is autistic, and the clapping will hurt his ears. This piece is special to him, let's make sure he can enjoy it, too, okay? Thanks!"

Murmurs rumbled through the audience as Junior sat down. Cherry interlocked their fingers. Beside her, Roy, Pom-Pom, Larry, Wendy and Jack took their seats.

"What's going on again?" Jack mumbled.

"Shh," Larry shushed him.

Wendy took a deep breath and cast Jack a sad sidelong look. "We're here to see Wolfgang's symphony."

Jack's face flushed. "Oh. Right. Sorry."

Aretha went backstage and led Wolfgang out by the hand. He froze briefly at the amount of people, saw the deaf applause spreading throughout the audience and giggled as he climbed onto the podium with her.

The performance went beautifully.

Wolfgang swooped the glittery baton Cherry gave him. It sparkled spectacularly and kept his attention focused on directing. Together, Aretha and Wolfgang were a team on that podium. The orchestra brought his vision to life.

Lights came on and off slowly, fading through colors without flashing or flickering. The screen behind the stage always showed water droplets falling in slow motion.

Wolfgang cried audibly just before the explosive climax of the penultimate movement, titled Death Is The Road To Awe. He held a long fermata of silence over a rest.

Aretha waited with him, the auditorium silent enough to hear a pin drop. Wolfgang sucked his thumb for a moment to quiet himself. His brief cries in the silence added something to the recording that would never be repeated.

SIlence fell again, roiling in anticipation. Wolfgang gave the downbeat, spread his arms like Ludwig used to, and all musical hell broke loose in the most amazing way.

Junior gripped Cherry's hand as teardrops glimmered on his face. He saw Ludwig and Black dying together through the drumming, bells and strings, and it opened a well of grief he left untapped for too long.

Roy pulled his sunglasses off and hid his face in his hands. Pom-Pom sniffed and wrapped her arm around him.

Larry looked away from everybody, wiping his eyes.

Wendy sobbed quietly on Jack's shoulder, and he had tears streaming down his cheeks.

Cherry squeezed Junior's hand.

Nobody moved for a solid thirty seconds after that piece concluded. In the corner of his eye, Junior swore he saw Ludwig and Black standing in the center aisle, beaming proudly. Of course nobody was there when he turned his head to look.

The final movement was a simple piano number symbolizing peace, titled Together We Will Live Forever. Wolfgang sat under the spotlight and played it himself, bathed in white light while the orchestra surrounded him.

Again, he hummed and whimpered, something never to be repeated for other performances. He gazed upward into the spotlight above him, no doubt seeing his dads smiling down at him.

Wendy got a beautiful photo of that moment. Wolfgang in profile, limned in white light with his huge fingers delicately touching the piano keys and his pink eyes full of longing gazing skyward.

At the final chord, which ended in a rumbling bass note, the spotlight slowly turned off to signal the symphony was over.

Wolfgang stood up in the darkness. Aretha hugged him tight while he wept on her shoulder. A few people in the audience forgot to applaud the deaf way, but some random claps were better than a thunderous wall of noise.

Aretha waited for him to collect himself before pointing to the audience. He approached the front of the stage to a standing ovation, and covered his ears with his palms when audible applause gradually replaced the wiggling hands. Despite it being too loud, he smiled, his eyes glistening with tears.

Critics compared Wolfgang's The Fountain to Ludwig's Interstellar and stated nobody would write anything like it ever again.

Like Ludwig, he appeared on talk shows and interviews. Aretha went along as moral support and to 'translate' him when his communications fell outside the hosts' understanding. Sometimes he shut down, and let her do all the talking. Most of his interviews were pre-recorded to allow him time to type, or to edit out moments where he panicked and fled off the set. Once, he walked out of a rare impromptu interview because the host talked to him like a toddler.

Aretha opened every session with the same spiel, "He understands what's going on around him, and he understands what you say to him. Sometimes he processes information better when it's signed, so be patient with us if I translate."

Mishaps aside, Wolfgang Amadeus Koopason became a household name. He made waves in musical spheres that immortalized him alongside his dad, Ludwig von Koopason.

.o

Tragedy lurked behind the triumph. It always did.

Jack developed dementia just like Black, albeit later, and he did not decline peacefully. He fought, he screamed, he constantly forgot he was blind. A fall down the stairs in Wendy's castle finished detaching his retinas. He lost his remaining sight, confusing him further, and the concussion worsened his dementia symptoms overnight.

"Where's my brother? Take me to Black! Stop hiding him from me!" Jack hollered.

Telling him Black died seemed cruel when he couldn't hold onto that knowledge for more than ten minutes. People found a lot of excuses, like he was at work, or stepped out for a beer, or on a date with Ludwig.

Jack went through a disturbing hypersexual phase during his descent into dementia. Cherry decided to stop visiting him unsupervised when he tried to have sex with her. He forced himself on Wendy a few times, which left her shaken. Sometimes he masturbated compulsively. Everybody knew he would be horrified if he was aware of himself.

Wendy became more and more distraught trying to care for Jack. The night she slapped him to escape an unwanted advance, she knew this situation was beyond her control. She brought him to the KT castle under the pretense of a vacation because she needed help, and her castle staff members weren't strong enough to handle Jack's growing needs.

"Why are the fucking lights always off?" Jack snarled when Junior visited him in Wendy's very pink room.

"Uh…power outage, sorry," Junior said.

Jack went back to pacing, rarely hitting anything since all the furniture had been cleared out of his path.

"Hey, how about a snack? I have banana chips. On your left, here." Junior awkwardly offered the bag.

Jack upended it, spilling chips all over the floor, and trampled them. He scowled at nothing while he stomped. Always with the endless need to pace.

Junior assigned a nursing team just to him. They posed as 'hotel staff' and Jack accepted their aid.

Boom-Boom hid the bedroom door behind a false wall to stop Jack from wandering the halls unsupervised, yet allowed everyone else to enter and leave as needed.

Wendy could finally breathe.

Jack declined much, much faster than Black. In five years, he was bedridden, unable to move much or feed himself. Those bulging muscles he worked so hard on shrank away to nothing, and his arms curled up in contractures.

Wendy parked by his side, changing his vent bag when he needed it, feeding him, comforting him and stroking his face. She was a stranger to him now, just one more voice in a sea of many.

Every time she touched him, she said, "Jack, it's Wendy. I love you."

"Mama?" Jack murmured. He never spoke a word again after that.

The morning he died, Wendy kissed his forehead and went into the bathroom. He was alive when she left and gone by her return. She hated herself for not waiting five more minutes, until Larry pulled her aside and hugged her tight against his chest.

"Sometimes, people wait until they're alone to die."

"He's right." Pom-Pom joined Larry in embracing Wendy. Tears glistened in her eyes. "Death is personal and intimate. Some people don't want to share it with anybody."

"Some don't get a choice," Wendy sniffed. "This is hard! I love him! He wasn't the Jack I fell for, but I never stopped loving him!"

Pom-Pom stroked her hair while Larry nuzzled her cheek. "His heart knew you, Wendy."

Junior went up to see Jack after he passed. He looked identical Black— eyes mostly closed, mouth ajar, face sickly gray. His messy silver hair formed spirals on the red pillow cradling his head.

Jack left a will saying he wanted to be interred in the wall of Bowser's volcano, so Wendy made sure he had a nice tomb on the east side close to the lava.

She coiled his long hair into a bun, slipped his old medic helmet onto his head and sent him to his grave with his red-framed glasses on his face and his folded white cane in his hands.

Jack died at a hundred and eight years old.

Aretha, Pom-Pom and Cherry poured love over Wendy while she mourned.

Wendy threw out all her old hats, jewelry and makeup that weren't gifts and went on a shopping spree to replace them. Store therapy, she called it.

Time surged ahead, catching everything in its endless swirl.

.o

Wendy, Pom-Pom, Aretha and Cherry arranged a girls' three-day-stay at the Koopa City Mud Spa. It ended up being a bigger deal than they anticipated, with Cherry being the queen, so the place shut down to allow them an unbothered visit.

"Okay, if they're having girl day, we're having guy day. I'll cook those oysters I got." Roy called Junior, Larry and Wolfgang on a group line.

"Sure!" Junior grinned. "We can create mischief while they're gone."

Wolfgang grunted into his phone.

"Right," Roy laughed his little high-pitched laugh, "I'll do Cheep-Cheep kabobs for you, Wolfgang."

"I'm game!" Larry said. His phone blustered since he was outside. "I'll bring cards and chips so we can ruin each others' day."

Junior hosted it in the kitchen, since the table was huge and Wolfgang wouldn't have to worry about being anxious. He had plenty of beer, tea and water to keep everybody topped up.

"Geez, Roy," Junior said when he saw his older brother emerge from the warp pipe, "Are you going to the gym more often?"

Roy's neck was half as thick as it used to be, and his once-beefy arms and legs were thinner than Junior's. He never had hair, so the only visible signs of his aging were wrinkles on his snout and his white eyebrows. Somehow, they grew shaggier as he got older.

"It's that damn stomach bug I had two months back. Bastard keeps biting my guts, I guess. C'mon, I have meat that needs to go in the fridge. Hey, Wolfgang! Hold this."

Wolfgang held his huge hands out as Roy set the box of oysters on his palms. He sniffed once, gagged audibly and shoved it back into Roy's arms.

Roy chuckled. "Everyone's a critic."

Larry brought a giant bag of ash nachos and lime dip along with his poker paraphernalia. "Fair warning, guys, I'm on call. I might have to bolt."

Junior slapped his shoulder. "No problem. We'll work with it."

Their day commenced as a huge cookout, playing hide and seek with Wolfgang in the hedge maze, shouting at a basketball game on TV and indulging in poker.

Wolfgang's stimming became his tell. Nobody wanted to bet against him if he smirked, hummed or bounced when he picked up a card. Only after he won the pot by getting everyone else to fold did he drop his measly pair of deuces. He bluffed!

"Shit!" Junior laughed, throwing his cards down.

Roy got Wolfgang to taste exactly one bite of grilled oyster. The gooey mess ended up spat out on the table. Lemmy did that with a lot of food after the first try. Wolfgang wasn't as picky of an eater, but he had a few foods he rejected immediately. Oysters became another one on his short list. He giggled and accepted the Cheep-Cheep kabob Junior forked into his mouth. Larry offered him beer, which he gladly imbibed.

Next round, Junior called Wolfgang's bluff, and lost again.

"You, sir, are an artist," Junior dramatically pushed his lost coins away.

"I'm cleaned out." Roy dropped his cards. He smiled, downing his beer. "Who taught you how to play like such a menace, huh?"

Wolfgang rubbed his fingers along his plastron as he processed the question and answered with Black's sign name.

"Figures."

Larry's phone rang at six o'clock, and he answered it as he picked up after everybody else.

"And there it is." He fed Wolfgang a stray nacho off someone's plate. "Heart transplant on the way. Time to bounce. Sorry."

Junior handed him the coins he won during the game. "Surgery trumps parties. Go get 'em, Larry."

"I'll pick up my poker stuff later. You mind?"

"Nah, go be a surgeon."

Roy rubbed his stomach like it hurt once Larry departed for the warp pipe outside. He finished his third bottle of Stellar beer and got up to load everything washable in the dishwasher.

Wolfgang eyed him curiously, his face inscrutable.

"Oof." Roy's forehead wrinkled. He held his stomach and bent forward, exhaling heavily.

"You okay?" Junior eyed him.

"Argh... Yeah. Maybe I'm not quite over that damn bug after all. My stomach hasn't stopped hurting since I had that bastard. Do you mind if I sleep here and take off tomorrow? I'm tired and a little bit drunk."

Upset stomach and drunk. Nothing to worry about. People went to bed at six o'clock when they didn't feel well, and it made sense for Roy to look thin if he had a stomach bug that cleaned his guts out. Those things lingered longer in older Koopas.

Junior shrugged, looking over his shoulder at Wolfgang doing his evening ritual of pacing circles around the kitchen island.

"Go ahead. Hit my phone if you need anything, I'll bring it up to you."

"Thanks, baby bro. G'night." Roy smiled, tipping his sunglasses like a hat.

Wolfgang grasped Roy's arm and peered worriedly at him. Before Roy could shake himself loose, Wolfgang embraced him, tucking his head under his chin.

"I'm f— okay. Yeah. I need a hug. You're right. Thanks, Wolfgang."

Roy disappeared upstairs. Goombas and Koopa Troopa servants cleaned up the crumbs and messes that hadn't been tended to yet.

Wolfgang continued his laps, his basso profundo voice rumbling off every surface as he hummed low in his throat.

Junior followed him for a lap around the island. Wolfgang suddenly turned, touched their foreheads together and hummed louder, his voice vibrating Junior's bones. His way of sharing what his own humming felt like to him.

For a moment, just a brief, flash of an instant, Junior was four years old again, listening to Bowser sing him lullabies.

"I miss my dad," he murmured.

Wolfgang patted his shoulder and kissed his cheek. He missed his dads, too.

They went outside, took a walk through the courtyard and watched the sunset together. Abendrot skies gave way to stars. The dense Milky Way loomed above the southern horizon.

Later, Junior changed Wolfgang's briefs— he soaked them completely because of the beer he drank— and combed his feathery hair. He liked having his hair brushed before going to bed, it helped calm his overly-activated nervous system.

Wolfgang ducked the brush when he had enough and crawled onto his huge slab of a bed.

"Good night." Junior kissed his forehead.

Wolfgang signed, "Sleep."

Junior slept fitfully, hugging a pillow because Cherry wasn't there.

In the morning, he was in the middle of spooning Wolfgang's ash oatmeal into his mouth when Boom-Boom entered the kitchen.

"Go downstairs and see Roy. Celine's floor, room seven. I'll feed the Wolf."

His serious face left no room for argument.

Oh, no. Junior's mind raced. He bolted for the elevator, and his breath whooshed loudly in his ears when he traipsed through the white halls. Every footstep jarred his hips. He wasn't a young Koopa anymore, and now his body began to let him know it.

Roy sat on the edge of the bed with the blankets wrapped around him. His shell was on the floor by the wall and his sunglasses sat upside down on the bedside table. An IV hung above him, dripping clear liquid through the catheter embedded in his caudal vein.

"Roy!" Junior skidded into the room.

The cheery pastel greens and blues didn't match the corrosive atmosphere surrounding the bed.

Roy's forehead furrowed, dark eyes glazed in terror. "I came down because I kept getting sick out of both ends and I couldn't stand the pain. I thought the oysters disagreed with my stomach, and then I thought it might be gallstones."

He took out his phone and showed Junior the CT scan of his torso, a front-on view. There were masses on the outlines of his organs where masses weren't supposed to be. Tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

"I'm all tumors inside. Some of 'em are as big as Birdo eggs. It started in my pancreas and blew up from there." His voice cracked as tears glistened on his face. "Docs say I'm gonna be dead in less than a week. What am I supposed to do?"

Junior's stomach dropped through the floor. Dread opened a pit in his chest. Nothing made sense. It was just a stomachache!

"No." He shook his head.

Roy grabbed his biceps and clung to him, claws almost tearing into his scales. Junior pulled him closer. They held onto each other and cried until their heads hurt.

Junior called up the girls and told them to come to the castle immediately. Roy wanted to break the news, so Junior silently watched their eyes glaze over in a mixture of shock, horror and disbelief.

"We'll figure it out." Pom-Pom stroked the top of Roy's bald pink head.

Roy declined rapidly, as if the discovery of the cancer allowed it to attack his body even more relentlessly. Within six hours he could no longer sit up due to the pain. Junior almost vomited watching his brother writhe and scream. Morphine and dilaudid weren't helping at all.

George hooked him up to a slow fentanyl drip, the strongest pain medicine available in the castle medical ward. It took two minutes for Roy to relax among the pale green sheets. George offered him oxygen as a comfort measure, but he declined it.

"Oh, Roy." Wendy sobbed, holding his hand.

Pom-Pom sat behind him and rubbed his back. Her eyes were blank, empty, as if she barely held herself tethered to reality.

Cherry stayed close to Junior's side, trembling.

"Larry's stuck with patients," Junior reported after getting a text. He updated him on Roy's condition before putting his phone away.

Aretha kissed Roy's cheek and went upstairs to take care of Wolfgang.

Roy and Pom-Pom never got the time to put their affairs in order. In the twenty four hours between diagnosis and the present, he went from fully alert to in and out of consciousness. He was constantly agitated, picking at his sheets and groaning.

The room took on a vague coppery, rotten smell, like decaying meat. Nobody acknowledged it or talked about it but they all knew it meant imminent death.

Michael came in to put a vent bag on Roy and discovered he urinated blood all over the bed. Roy groaned as he was rolled side to side and had his bottom end washed clean. He peed blood again as soon as he had a vent back in place, turning the absorbent cotton brown.

Junior stepped out to cry in the hall. Cherry found him sobbing. She hugged him, hiding his face in her chest.

Pom-Pom camped in the room so Roy wouldn't be alone. His chest gave off a horrific gurgling rattle that sounded like drowning.

Cherry took Pom-Pom food, light things such as sandwiches, or fruit bowls that were easy and quick to eat.

"Dad?" Roy mumbled when Junior sat on the bed. "Make it stop, dad."

"It'll stop soon." Junior rubbed his older brother's shoulder.

Pom-Pom set her fruit bowl aside and reached for Roy's hand. He looked at her and lifted his head off the pillow, his eyes faraway in their dreaminess.

"Will you marry me?"

Tears glistened on Pom-Pom's cheeks. She nodded, kissed him and caressed his face. "Absolutely, yes."

Roy smiled, letting his head flop back into the pillow. His raspy breathing resumed.

Wendy followed Pom-Pom when she fled from the room. It wasn't the first time Junior heard her cry, but never that loudly or explosively.

"I'm not ready for this!" Pom-Pom bawled. "He was fine, why is this happening? Why?"

Wendy's replies were inaudible.

Junior cupped the top of Roy's head. Israel came in earlier to help him roll onto his side, the only comfortable position for him. Pillows propped his legs up underneath the blankets. Fever left his scales clammy.

The empty void in Junior's chest felt the same as watching Bowser take his last gasping breaths. It never got easier.

Cherry took hold of Junior's other hand. Their eyes met. He saw the same emptiness in her gaze, too.

Aretha brought Wolfgang down just after dinner time. He sat by the foot of the bed and played a litany of songs on his portable keyboard. Most of it was Ludwig's, and he did it all from memory because he didn't have a single sheet of music with him.

But he segued in one piece that cut through the sadness blanketing the room.

Cherry let out a giggle. "That's Bowser's song. He wrote it about my mom."

Wolfgang smiled like he knew it would bring them a moment's joy. His mischievous grin had the curl of Ludwig's slyness and bared all his sharp teeth like Black's unhingedness.

Aretha touched her lips to Roy's furrowed brow and nuzzled their cheeks together. "Uncle Roy, it's Aretha. I'm here with you."

Roy's fingers twisted against his sheets. His mouth had a sickly grayish cast. He burst into tears, his gurgling sobs quaking his whole body. Pom-Pom rushed over to hold his hands and kiss the tears off his snout.

"Sweetheart, it's okay." She sniffled, "I'll figure things out."

Aretha moved to give Pom-Pom room to sit on the bed.

"Don't make me do this," Roy cried. "Pom-Pom…I'm not ready!"

"Roy," Pom-Pom's eyes were puffy. She wanted to scream, yet she held it back, somehow.

"I'm dying! I can feel it happening!" Roy's voice rasped in his throat. "I'm scared!"

Junior bent to kiss his older brother's cheek. If he spoke, his voice would break. He didn't know what to say, because everything people said in moments like this rang too hollow. Roy stared desperately at him, pleading, eyes huge and dilated in unspeakable terror. The shadow of death hung over him, bleeding his life away.

"It'll be okay," Junior said, because what else should he say?

"No, it's not okay! I'm fucking dying!" Roy sob-gasped.

And there wasn't a thing anybody could do about it.

Wendy laid down in the bed behind Roy and wrapped her arms around him. She wept silently where he couldn't see.

Cherry curled against Junior's chest. He hugged her, fingers stroking through her gray hair.

Wolfgang tilted his head in that sagely way he did to look at things through his peripheral vision. He segued from one of Ludwig's pieces into his own Together We Will Live Forever.

Aretha perched on the foot of the bed, her hand on Roy's hip. "I'm here, uncle Roy."

Roy gulped air like a fish pulled from the water. Tears continued to dribble across his snout, which grew paler and paler by the minute.

"We had a lot of good times, you and me," Pom-Pom murmured in his ear. She stroked the top of his bald head, voice cracking, "Like that sailing trip by the icebergs, and that night at the Triton where we broke the water bed, and that stupid moldy sub sandwich in the fridge you didn't throw away for a year because you wanted to see how disgusting it could get, and when you let Wolfgang bury you at the beach that one time…we laughed a lot, didn't we?"

"Yeah. And— the— the gardening— your flowers."

"I love those flowers, Roy."

"Pom-Pom— m'sorry— love you."

Secretions rattled thickly in Roy's chest. He reached for her, panting faster and faster. Pom-Pom caught his hand and clutched against her forehead, sobbing helplessly.

"I love you so much, Roy. This isn't fair!"

Wendy pressed closer to his back, claws digging against the plastron of his chest. Aretha brushed tears off her cheeks as she patted his hip. Junior kept hugging Cherry while she hid her face in his chest. Wolfgang bent low over his keyboard, fingers never faltering in their playing across the keys.

"I love you, big bro," Junior whispered.

"Help," Roy rasped. He shuddered, gasping, his eyes closing halfway with his dark irises barely visible beneath the lids.

"Oh, no!" Pom-Pom wailed, keeping his hand against her cheek. "Roy! I love you, Roy! It'll be over soon! Oh, Gods, I hope he sees the light!"

Roy breathed in short, shallow sips, the pauses between lasting agonizingly long.

"He does." Junior held onto Pom-Pom's shoulder while she sobbed so hard she gagged.

"Roy," she whimpered, cupping the top of his head. "Go with the light."

Cherry sniffled in his arms. She didn't turn to watch Roy's desperate final struggle.

Aretha rubbed Roy's forearm. A faint sob escaped her. "I love you, uncle Roy."

Tears continued their endless tracks across Roy's pale, cyanotic snout. His face twisted in agony. He moaned just before Wolfgang played a final chord on his keyboard. Frothy yellow secretions dribbled out of his mouth as his eyes rolled back into his skull.

Silence enveloped the room. A familiar silence Junior knew all-too-well.

Wendy popped her head up to look at Roy's gape-mouthed face. Her expression contorted. She wailed against the back of his neck. "He died! I felt his heart stop! He just— he died! Oh, Roy!"

Pom-Pom clung to his hand. Junior would never forget the glass-shattering keening that left her throat. Wolfgang clapped his hands over his ears and whined softly.

Larry burst into the room, panting from running, his salt and pepper Mohawk practically bristling. His absence spared him the horror of Roy's final moments. He took one look at the scene and exploded into tears. Aretha patted the spot next to her, giving him room to curl up on the bed and lay his head on Roy's shoulder.

"I'm sorry!" He bawled, "I was in surgery! People kept coming in, needing me! I'm here now, Roy, I'm here!"

Cherry looked over her shoulder at Roy, then up at Junior. Tears glistened in her eyes. Junior nodded, he understood why she couldn't bear to watch.

Wolfgang let out a quiet, whining sob. Aretha sat on the floor next to him.

In the midst of it all, Roy lay still. Ripped out of life by cancer he didn't know he had until less than two days ago. He was a hundred and two years old.

Junior didn't cry properly until the shock wore off while he was alone in the shower. Cherry found him sitting on the floor with his face buried in his folded arms. Her dress got soaked from her pulling him into a hug.

Roy's wake was one of the quietest Junior remembered. He looked so weirdly normal lying there in the white tux and black bow tie he wore at his wedding so long ago. His face didn't sag backwards like everybody else, he appeared almost the same as he did in slumber.

Pom-Pom stayed by his side, crying inconsolably. Aretha, Cherry and Wendy took turns hugging her while she wept.

"He was so scared," she sniffled, face soaked in tears. "He didn't want to die!"

Wolfgang picked her up like a baby in his huge arms and kissed her cheek.

"Love, aunt," he signed to her.

Pom-Pom buried her face in his neck and cried more.

Cancerous organs were forbidden from being consumed. The only parts of Roy that didn't have any were his heart and brain.

Junior couldn't avoid a sad smile at Roy's two mirror image left anterior descending coronary arteries. He was the only Koopa in the family with that anatomical variation.

"Take his heart," Junior said to Pom-Pom. "He loved you with all of it."

She teared up, took it home and returned to the wake later with breaded heart meat wraps for the dinner.

Pom-Pom slid Roy's dark sunglasses on his face and threaded lace bobbins into his hand before he was sealed inside his shell. The family buried him on the south side of Bowser's volcano.

Wendy, Aretha and Cherry surrounded Pom-Pom in love and comfort. They did their utmost to support her, but the trauma of Roy's sudden death trampled her. She declined, mentally and physically, less than six months after Roy died.

Wendy drove her to the Koopa General hospital when she collapsed at her castle and wouldn't wake up. Doctors found sepsis, but couldn't figure out where it came from, and she deteriorated while they poked and prodded her looking for answers.

Wendy cradled Pom-Pom in her arms for three straight hours and kissed her when she gasped her final breath. She knew the doctors' attempts to revive her would fail, and she sobbed while they tried.

From start to finish, she died in under six hours. She was a hundred and two.

"You missed Roy that much," Wendy whispered as she held Pom-Pom's limp hand.

Boom-Boom arrived as medics pronounced Pom-Pom dead. Wendy passed her to his arms and held him when he broke down weeping over her lifeless corpse.

"My baby sister!" He shouted through his tears.

Neither doctors nor coroners found the source of the sepsis that killed her. It was as if her body destroyed itself in grief. They okayed her organs for consumption, but only if cooked thoroughly at the hottest possible temperatures, so her wake dinner had a lot of hot stews.

Pom-Pom looked so tragically beautiful laid out on her hay nest. Wendy braided flowers into her white hair, painted her claws iridescent pink and lightly dusted her closed eyes with gold glitter eyeshadow. The family buried her in the volcano next to ROy.

Wendy cried bitterly for months after. Cherry pulled her back from alcoholism the way nobody could for Scott.

"Girls stick together, and this is going to make you sick," Cherry told Wendy as she poured her vodka down the sink. "Come on, let's drink tea instead."

Wolfgang held Wendy's graying hair back while she threw up the tea later. He wrapped her in a blanket and helped Cherry put her to bed.

The next day, Wendy woke up and chose to keep living. Pom-Pom and Sienna would want that.

.o

Through decades of dogged research on Morton's heart and other donated hearts, Larry found a way to turn off the gene that triggered Crash in embryos who developed it. All it took was shifting how the proteins in the genes folded as they formed.

The experiment took six months to work. People who hatched with Crash couldn't be cured, but computer models showed their children were a different story.

He called Junior at three in the morning to yell excitedly at him about it while driving home.

"I cured it! Junior! The model worked! I ended Crash!" The phone was on speaker, giving him a muffled sound. "HAHA! It's over! Crash is over! I beat it! I— AAH!"

Larry screamed. Tires screeched. Metal crunched.

"Larry?" Junior shouted into his phone. All he heard was horrific gurgling, so he used another phone to call an ambulance to the coordinates on Larry's phone.

Larry's breathing slowed. He moaned. Junior stayed on the line.

"Don't move, Larry! I'm here. I love you. Don't move!"

Sirens rang. Radio chatter undercut the raspy groaning. Something whirred and snapped. Voices spoke over each other.

One of the paramedics picked up the phone.

"King Junior? Sire? A boulder fell into the road. His car struck head-on and the airbags didn't deploy like they should have. We're taking him to Koopa Central."

"Thank you."

"What's happening?" Cherry yawned.

"Larry crashed his car. I'm going to the hospital. It's bad. I'll call you when I know more."

Junior— now with all white hair and a limp from arthritis in his hips— hobbled to the hospital via warp zone.

No word yet, so he kept the family updated in a group text. Time ticked by. Hours hung among cold fluorescent overhead lights that deepened the wrinkles around his snout.

Finally, a petite green-shelled Koopa Troopa named Nora showed him upstairs to the ICU where they kept Larry.

The walls were depressingly gray with cream-colored stripes. A tall tinted window took up most of the wall behind the bed, offering a view of white street lights and smaragdine treetops. Junior's nostrils flared in the antiseptic air.

Larry looked horrible in the white bed, his swollen, bloody snout smashed backwards into his facial bones. His eyes weren't wide open, but they weren't fully shut either. Doctors couldn't intubate him due to his shattered maxilla and mandible, so they cut a tracheostomy into his throat and attached the ventilator there. The tube was black, a change from the usual blue, white or clear. Blood stained the gauze squares packed around his tracheostomy stoma reddish-brown.

All the equipment Junior laid eyes on rang too familiar in his memory. He could name every piece of machinery and what it did because Celine took the time to explain it to a scared four year old who found his dad fighting for his life.

Junior picked up the chart from the rack by the door and read through it.

The collision snapped Larry's left arm into three pieces, fractured two of his ribs on his left side, crushed six vertebrae in his tail and tore all the ligaments in both his knees. His liver, spleen, left lung and liver were lacerated and slowly bleeding into his abdominal cavity.

MRI scans revealed brain trauma incompatible with life. One doctor crassly described it in his notes as an egg yolk getting smashed inside the shell. That only happened when the tip of a Koopa's snout took the brunt of an impact, shattered, transferred all the force into his skull and slammed his brain around inside his cranium until it nearly liquefied. A one in a thousand shot. His brain stem and cerebellum were the only intact pieces.

Larry wasn't wearing his seatbelt. In his moments of euphoric excitement, he forgot to put it on. All that damage happened to his body in a fraction of a second.

Junior signed the form to withdraw life support because that seemed like the merciful thing to do. Doctors hooked Larry up to fentanyl, the same medicine Roy got for his cancer, to prevent him from perceiving any pain or air hunger.

"Please don't unhook anything until we're all here."

"We won't, your majesty," said Nora. She bowed, eyes downcast.

Familiar hisses, clicks and beeps speckled the silence. Junior called everybody at five o'clock in the morning because he didn't want to leave Larry suffering any longer than necessary. They rushed over, and by six everyone gathered around the hospital bed.

"Oh, Larry." Cherry picked his uninjured hand up and stroked his fingers.

"His star," Wendy said sadly, touching a gash where he used to have his hatch-mark. Stitches ran right through the blue star, deforming it.

Aretha led Wolfgang in by the hand. Wolfgang was afraid to touch Larry's hands, so he rubbed his feet instead. He wore his tablet on a black strap hooked over his shoulder.

"Bad. Hurt."

Cherry touched Wolfgang's arm. "Yeah, he is."

"Uncle Larry," Aretha whispered, kissing his forehead. "We're all here."

Junior looked out the door at Nora, who sat at the ICU nurse's station. Their eyes met. He gave the nod nobody wanted to give

Nora okayed it with the attending before she muted the heart monitor alarms and shut off the ventilator. She rubbed Larry's shoulder as she popped the tube off his trach and coiled it atop the ventilator machine.

Mucus bubbled in the trach. Nora suctioned it away, and the lack of a cough response was telling. Her movements were gentle, yet quick, seeking to make Larry comfortable and get out of everyone's way. She reminded Junior of Judy.

Larry's throat muscles flexed rhythmically, like he wanted to gulp and couldn't. Lemmy did that after having his ventilator turned off.

Wolfgang scrolled through an app on his tablet and highlighted something. Bowser's rough, distinctive singing voice permeated the quiet.

" Somewhere over the rainbow… "

Cherry covered her mouth as tears streamed onto her cheeks. Junior swallowed over the lump in his throat. Aretha and Wendy hugged each other, crying quietly.

"Hear that, Larry?" Wendy sobbed, lower jaw quivering, "You'll hear him singing for real soon."

The room quieted again once the song finished. Larry struggled on for another forty-five minutes.

Cherry scooted behind the head of the bed. She caressed the side of Larry's face with her knuckles. Aretha took hold of his other hand, albeit gently since it was so bruised. Wendy stroked the uninjured side of his head, her eyes glistening.

Junior was about to let go of Larry's hand to take a break. Much larger white hands clamped onto his wrist and Larry's, halting the separation. He glanced up at Wolfgang, whose eyes were fixed on the monitor.

The pulse oximeter, blood pressure and heartbeats per minute numbers dropped steadily. Everyone watched the spiking white line dissolve to a sawtooth pattern growing finer until it flatlined.

Larry's whole body gave the faintest shudder and stilled. Sunlight shone through the window as he died surrounded by what remained of his family. No alarms broke the peaceful quietude since Nora so compassionately muted them.

He was ninety-nine years old, and he never got to see his Crash cure in action.

Wolfgang let go of Junior's and Larry's wrists. He cupped his hand over Larry's forehead. Cherry kissed the top of Larry's head. She moved, giving Wendy and Aretha room to hug and kiss him. Junior kept holding his hand.

The flatlining heart monitor traced Larry's absence. Everybody stared at each other in the dim morning light, numb.

Aretha pushed the call button and alerted Nora.

Orderlies came in, disconnected the IVs, shut everything electronic off and moved Larry's body into a black body bag.

Larry wasn't a particularly large Koopa. Taller than Wendy, but shorter than Junior. His body bag looked small on the gurney.

Every doctor and nurse able to get away for a few moments lined the hallway. They raised their hands to their foreheads in stiff salutes when the gurney passed them.

As Junior and the others left the hospital later, Wendy stopped by the abstract heart-shaped sculpture outside the front entrance and unleashed a high-pitched scream at the sky. Wolfgang covered his ears. Aretha and Cherry led him ahead to get him away from the noise. Junior rushed to wrap Wendy up in his arms and hold her.

"It's just us, Ju-ju!" Wendy sobbed. "Don't you dare die before me!"

She knew that was a promise neither of them could make. Life showed them how death lurked everywhere, wrecking their family.

Junior cupped the back of her head. "I love you, big sis."

Wendy slapped his shoulders, sniffling, "Shut up, you know I love you, too."

They embraced harder and wept together.

Aretha made sure the mortician reconstructed Larry's jaw before his wake. It still looked crooked and flat despite their best efforts, but it was better than what Junior saw in the hospital. Wendy dressed him in a smart blue suit and used liquid makeup to recreate the blue star hatch-mark on the side of his head. Wolfgang laid his stethoscope in his hands. Cherry combed his gray hair into a neat Mohawk.

He was entombed on the west side of Bowser's volcano. His iron burial plaque stated, Larry Koopa: the hero who cured Crash.

Junior went to Larry's office where he performed all his research and found the written formula for the Crash cure. He looked at it in his hands, the solution to end the thing that killed his dad and brothers.

"Who is the most senior person here? Who worked directly under doctor Larry?"

"I did, sire," said a blue-shelled Koopa Troopa. She wore black high heels and carried a folder under her arm. "I was with him when he made the breakthrough."

"What is your name?"

"Janet, sire. I'm a geneticist."

There were thousands of Janets out there, but somehow Junior knew who this one was. He offered her the precious folder with both hands.

"The rest is up to you, Janet. You're a hero in this, too."

She accepted it and bowed, her eyes welling over. "Doctor Larry was relentless. I vow to continue his work."

Junior nodded and left her with it, knowing a future without Crash rested in her hands. All he could think about was Larry's unbridled, howling joy as he broke the news. That joy would be the last thing he knew. Junior found comfort in that.

And time trampled ever onward, uncaring.

.o

Wendy got tired of dyeing her hair, so she chopped it short when her roots appeared and let it grow out white. It only took her a year to reach past her shoulders.

"I look so old," Cherry groaned at her reflection in the bathroom mirror as she brushed her silver hair.

She wasn't exactly frail, even at ninety-two, but her skin wrinkled, her back hunched a little and her steps weren't as springy.

"You are old! Age is beauty." Wendy smirked, swiping Cherry's brush and arranging her long hair into a luxurious four-strand braid.

"People have this stupid idea that women are only gorgeous when they're young. That's a crock of shit. They say that because most older women are taken. Look at you! Those big blue eyes? That smile? You're a winner."

Cherry giggled, straightening her heart shaped bangs. "Junior is still a looker. I mean, that eyebrow wiggle he does? It always ends me."

Junior walked past the bathroom, poked his head in and waggled his eyebrows at them in the mirror. He had no idea what they found so funny after he left.

Cherry chased him down to kiss him.

"Tell your wife she's beautiful!" Wendy called down the trapdoor. "Now behave, I'm taking Wolfgang out for an ice cream date!"

Wolfgang chirped happily the whole time Wendy changed his briefs and combed his hair. They were out the door in less than thirty minutes.

That night, Junior treated Cherry to a candlelit dinner. Fancy dinnerware, formal tablecloth, flowers and all. Soup, vegetables, breaded Blooper tentacles and wine were served on his finest china.

"Cherry, you are the most beautiful woman in the world," he said as they finished eating. "I made all this fuss just to tell you that."

Cherry's cheeks flushed. She smiled, reaching for his hand. "I love you."

They kissed tenderly in the glow of gold candelabras.

When Wendy returned later, Junior hugged her and kissed her cheek. "Best big sister. Love you."

"I love you, too, Ju-ju. Be nice to your wife." She poked his sides, giggled and headed for the warp zone.

.o

Wendy sat down for a WendyCorp meeting, flicked through their ideas and growled at finding the same old tired trends.

"Do something original, like putting glitter on false eyelashes. People deserve to feel beautiful. Ugh, do better. I'm tired, let me nap."

She folded her arms on the table, put her head down on them and sighed dramatically. Everybody talked around her, bouncing ideas for glitter eyelash designs.

When her colleagues went to rouse her, she toppled limply out of the chair.

They called an ambulance. Medics attempted to resuscitate her, but she was blue and long gone.

Wendy died of natural causes at a hundred and seven years old. She met a quick, painless, peaceful end. More importantly, she died bossing people around in the middle of a business meeting. It was such a Wendy way to go.

Junior snickered in disbelief when he hung up the phone call that alerted him to her passing, and sobbed upon seeing her pale body. His beautiful big sister was gone.

"Dammit, Barfhead," he whispered, tearfully stroking her hair. "You took charge like you always do."

She still had on her gold bangles and red pearl necklace. Junior took them off and laid them at her side for Aretha to pick up later.

Wolfgang spent two hours cradling her against his chest and bawling his eyes out. He was alive today because she cared enough to help him.

The day before she died, Wendy texted Junior a video of herself feeding Wolfgang ice cream. He rubbed his plastron and hummed in delight while enjoying the frozen treat. Watching Wendy hug and kiss him was a marvel in itself. As a toddler, he wouldn't let her touch him. Their last photo together had him beaming with joy while she kissed his cheek.

Morticians couldn't get Wendy's makeup right, so Aretha chased them off and did it herself. No way was she letting her aunt look ugly at her wake.

Wendy got her signature pink lipstick and a hint of glossy gold foundation to give her face a slight glow. Aretha stole a pair of experimental gold glitter eyelashes and put them on her closed eyes. Let her be the first to wear them! They were absolutely stunning on her!

She styled Wendy's white hair into beautiful soft waves, as if she just took out a braid after a day at the beach.

Aretha painted Wendy's claws fiery red and placed that nail polish bottle in her limp hands after.

To finish, she adorned Wendy in the jewelry she had custom made for her wake someday— a beaded gold necklace engraved with the names of everyone in her family and fitted gold wrist cuffs.

Junior held Wendy's wake in her castle, so she could be laid out beside her glorious gold heart-shaped fireplace and surrounded by the reds, pinks, purples and golds of her beautiful home.

Baby's breath blossoms dotted her wake nest. Her face had the same unnatural sagging as everyone else, but she appeared to pout ever so slightly.

No corpse looked more exquisite than Wendy O'Koopa. Aretha made sure of that.

At the wake dinner, Cherry pointed to Junior's black plate.

"When you eat somebody who ate whoever came before, you get everybody, right?"

Junior nodded dazedly. "That's correct."

Cherry leaned over and ate the bite on his fork. She covered her mouth to choke it down and gulped her tea afterward.

"What part of her was that?"

Junior met her teary eyes, his own welling over.

"Liver."

She sniffled, "Bowser and your siblings are in me now."

"So are Jack, Black, Pom-Pom, Sienna and Scott." Junior said.

"Yeah. I'm okay with that. I want them with me."

He kissed her forehead. "I love you."

The family interred Wendy beside Jack in the volcano. Before lowering her in, Wolfgang heaped flowers and glitter onto her shell. He didn't cry visibly over many deaths, but he cried about Wendy for weeks.

Her death made the news. It caused the same stir as Bowser and Ludwig. This time, reporters left the royal family alone.

Cleaning Wendy's castle out took five months. Aretha kept all of her jewelry and wore it whenever a formal occasion called for it.

Cherry collected Wendy's hair clips to wear. Junior smiled whenever he saw his sister's favorites on his wife. Wendy would've been proud to know her beauty carried on.

Junior found himself subdividing his life. With his dad, and without him. With his siblings, and without them. Now they were all gone.

Time pulled forward, its ruthless sweeps leaving nobody behind.

.o

Cherry celebrated her hundredth birthday, and Junior celebrated his hundredth hatch-day the following year. Then they threw a joint party for the hell of it and shot off fireworks. Wolfgang had a meltdown from all the noise. Aretha took care of him until he calmed down. Junior apologized for scaring him, and they laughed about it later.

Age stooped Junior over more, and he walked much, much slower than he used to. Arthritis maintained its grip on his hips. The pain responded well to anti-arthritic medication, so he didn't feel ready to use a cane yet.

I look pretty good for a century old! Junior thought when he gazed at his wrinkled reflection.

He licked his thumbs and wiped them across his eyebrows. They got shaggier as he aged, and he had a menacing frown crease running straight between them. The laugh-lines around his eyes and mouth helped offset that wrinkle. His hair never thinned or fell out like his dad's. Maybe the heart attacks had something to do with Bowser's hair loss.

The only thing Junior hated about aging was losing fat and muscle mass. He had the typical pot-belly of an elderly Koopa while his arms and legs lost some of their beefiness. No amount of walking treadmills in the gym or exercising (gently) with weights kept it at bay.

I'm getting old. No, I am old. Junior looked up at the bathroom light above the rectangular mirror. I wonder if dad would've lived this long if his Crash got treated early.

Junior contented himself with never knowing. He shut off the light and padded out of the bathroom.

.o

Cherry developed an annoying, persistent dry cough. Several tests later, she had a diagnosis of lung cancer. Doctors removed her left lung entirely. New tumors showed up in the right one.

They tried talking her into accepting her fate due to her advanced age, and she would have none of it, so full steam ahead she went. She wore ruby tiaras and stocking caps instead of wigs when the powerful chemotherapy drugs caused her hair to fall out. She fought it for five courageous years before the treatments began to fail.

Junior sat with Cherry in doctor Ostoad's earth-toned office. She was a mousy Toad who wore oversized brown glasses.

"We've reached an impasse, your majesty."

Cherry squared her shoulders and adjusted her red stocking cap. "I'm ready."

Junior wasn't, but it wasn't his news to hear. He knew it wouldn't be good.

Ostoad folded her hands on her desk, lips pursed. "The tumors spread to your liver and kidneys. At this point the chemotherapy—"

Cherry held out her frail, bony hand in a quieting gesture. Brown age spots dotted her wrinkled skin.

"You're asking me to decide between a lot of time sick with the chemo, or a short time of feeling okay before it's over, aren't you? What are my timeframes?"

Cutting to the chase. Typical Cherry.

Ostoad bowed her head, but did not mince words. "With chemo, a year. Without, three to six months."

Cherry's blue eyes focused on Junior. Fear limned them.

She returned her gaze to Ostoad and declared, "Seven months. I'm not missing my birthday."

Once they left the office together, Junior caught her up in a hug and pressed his nose against her stocking cap.

"Eighty-three years of being married to you isn't enough, Cherry."

"But we've known each other for a century, Junior. You were four, and I was five when we met, remember?" She smiled, nuzzling her forehead against his chin. "And that's how long I've loved you."

The lump in Junior's throat bled up towards his face and escaped as tears. "I don't want to say goodbye."

"Then don't." Cherry kissed him. "I won't. You'll see me again when it's your turn anyway."

She thumbed the tears off his cheeks and sniffled, shedding some of her own. "We got old together. You're just going to get older without me."

He kissed the words off her lips. "Getting old with you is the best part of getting old."

"We're old farts."

"Cherry, we are ancient farts."

They laughed through their crying.

.o

Chilly late winter wind blew snow against the window of the smaller, cozier living room. Orange light from the arching stone fireplace danced off the crown molding of the ceiling and illuminated many personal family photos hung on the marble walls.

Cherry didn't make the mistakes of Bowser and Mario. She gathered Aretha and Wolfgang and explained that her cancer was terminal.

Wolfgang didn't react much, except to rock back and forth on the floor where he sat. He stared down at his tablet on the floor in front of him.

Aretha enfolded Cherry in her arms and rested her chin on her shoulder.

Wolfgang grasped Junior's wrist, almost yanking him off his chair.

"Dad, fall." He typed slowly, fingertip lighting up icons as he touched them. "Carry. Help. Together."

Junior swallowed thickly. "You helped Ludwig?"

"Yes," Wolfgang signed. He typed again. "Help auntie."

"Help me what?" Cherry asked.

Wolfgang suddenly stood and scooped her up bridal style. She looked tiny next to Junior, in Wolfgang's arms she seemed positively minuscule.

He kissed her forehead, sat with her still cradled in his arms and hummed softly in the back of his throat.

"Fall. Help. Promise." Wolfgang typed.

"Ludwig fell when he had the stroke. Wolfgang picked him up and laid him in bed with Black." As always, Aretha knew how to translate him. She gazed at them, her eyes puffy with tears. "He's offering to help you too if you fall."

Junior had to walk away for a few minutes. All this time he thought Ludwig laid himself down with Black to die, and now he learned Wolfgang helped him reach his deathbed. He couldn't fathom the strength it took to do that.

"Aw." Cherry wrapped her arms around Wolfgang's neck and stroked his diaphanous white hair. "I'll appreciate it very much if you help me when I fall, Wolfgang."

"Today." Wolfgang typed.

"Nah. I'm not going to die today."

Aretha rested her hand on Junior's shoulder. "You okay, uncle Junior?"

Junior faced her, eyes overflowing. "Everybody's dying. I remember when Morton put you in my arms barely an hour after you hatched. You were so new, so tiny, and I hated that you were going to know what grief is."

Aretha's eyes softened as she gazed up at him. "It's always easier when you're a kid. The adults get to do all the worrying."

Junior remembered back to his siblings trying to protect him from the horror of his dad's first heart attack. The innocence of youth was an occhiolism surrounded by an event horizon that couldn't be returned to once crossed. Everyone in his life grew to be another layer surrounding him, and one by one they were dissolving.

He looked away from Aretha, dreading the possibility of outliving her. His gaze landed on Wolfgang, and the dread inside him grew. Cherry, Aretha, Wolfgang, Lakitu and Boom-Boom were the last vestiges of his old life. How could he survive without them?

Junior drew Aretha close, his big hands cupping the back of her shell while he hugged her.

"I love you, Aretha," he whispered.

She smiled, giving him a tight squeeze. "I love you, too, uncle Junior. It'll be okay."

.o

Six months passed too fast for Junior's liking. Cherry needed strong painkillers to stay comfortable, and she only spent very short times out of bed. A lot of her hair grew back once she stopped treatments to prepare for the end of her life, so she styled it into a cute silver pixie cut. Her eyelashes and eyebrows returned white, like frost.

Junior told her she looked beautiful every single day, even as the cancer ravaged her body into skin and bones.

"Hey," Cherry elbowed him as they woke up together one late spring morning. "It's D-day."

"Huh?" Junior opened one eye.

"Today's death day. I'm supposed to be dead, and I'm still here." She folded her hands under her cheek and waggled her eyebrows.

He kissed her tenderly and stroked her soft hair. "You look beautiful."

Three weeks later, Cherry spent more time asleep than awake. She threw up anything solid she ate, including her pain pills, so her diet shrank to broths, milkshakes and a lot of ginger tea for nausea.

Ostoad ordered an IV for her port-a-cath so she had continuous pain relief. Cherry adhered the Huber needle in place using a bandaid with a skull and crossbones on it, and she named her IV pole Beatrice.

"Feed Beatrice, she's angry without a full bag," she joked.

The whole thing operated via touchscreens, and a wireless remote button allowed her to give herself bolus doses if she want. She wore it on a black strap around her thin wrist.

Wolfgang wouldn't come near the IV pole for three straight days. He didn't have any problems seeing them while visiting Iggy, Lemmy or Larry, but something about seeing it out of a medical environment short-circuited his brain.

Aretha wrapped it in a fake passion flower vine she found in an old box, and that helped him not see it as threatening.

Wolfgang started taking pictures of leaves and flowers with his tablet and bringing them to show Cherry. She loved that.

The day before her birthday, Cherry developed a horrid, painful fever that necessitated a trip down to Celine's floor. Ostoad added a slow drip of acetaminophen alongside the morphine. She ordered Ativan next to help Cherry's nausea and anxiety.

"Where's my mom?" Cherry murmured, looking around at the pastel greens and blues of the room.

It wasn't the same room Roy died in, but it looked similar enough that it rekindled bad memories.

Junior remembered Bowser going through delirium after his second heart attack. He stroked Cherry's baby-fine hair and kissed her wrinkled brow.

"She's busy making something beautiful for you."

"Okay."

Once Cherry drifted off to sleep, Ostoad pulled Junior aside. Her glasses flashed when she looked up at him through serious dark eyes.

"She won't make it through tonight. Get anybody who wants to say goodbye down here."

Junior's heart sank, but he heeded Ostoad's words and called Aretha. She brought Wolfgang with her. He led them to the room where Cherry was kept and walked away up the hall to give them privacy.

In his hand, his cell phone holding photos from their childhood all the way up to this year. A hundred years of their lives together— there wasn't anybody else in his life he could say he knew that long— and it was about to end.

"Hey." Boom-Boom's gruff voice broke through his ruminations.

He wasn't young anymore. Creases and wrinkles framed his mouth and dark eyes like the lines on an old map. The pathways his life took him on were written on his face.

Junior looked into Boom-Boom's eyes and the tears exploded out of him with such intensity that he had to sit on the floor. Arthritic hips be-damned, the grief capsized him like a rogue wave.

Boom-Boom sat next to him and patted his shoulder with one of his huge, heavy hands. The same hands that pumped Bowser's chest so long ago to keep him alive.

"Two days before she died, Pom-Pom said something that stuck with me. I'm gonna say it to you."

He stared straight ahead, expression grim.

"There's no such thing as a good death or a bad death. That implies how you die is always in your control and not random chance. Death is the same end for everybody, regardless of how it happens. It's the people left behind who have to live with the memory of what happened, and there's always a little bit of guilt that you got to live while they had to die. It's hard."

The weight of that truth hung in the air.

"Dad," Junior whispered.

"Huh?"

Junior brushed tears out of his eyes with his thumb. Everyone who would be greatly upset to hear this was dead now, so he confessed the secret he buried far too long.

"I lied my ass off telling people about how my dad died. He tried to jump off the bed. He spat fire, he thrashed, he roared and he fought. He grabbed Cherry's hands and almost pulled her off her feet. He didn't calm down until the last minute. The part about talking to Peach is true, but I left out what happened before. It was ugly, Boom-Boom. Up until that moment, it was the worst thing I saw in my life."

Confessing that pulled the weirdest, most rancid weight off his heart. His tears started anew, and he didn't hold them back.

"That's rough." Boom-Boom sat next to him, patting his shoulder again.

Through his tears, Junior croaked, "Roy was worse than dad, looking back. Dad was ready, his body just didn't want to let go. Roy didn't want to die. He was terrified all the way until he stopped breathing."

He sniffled and coughed, "The way Ludwig died would've given me nightmares for the rest of my life, and Wolfgang seems so…I dunno, okay about it. Aren't autistic people more prone to trauma than people who aren't?"

"Beats me." Boom-Boom rumbled, "Ludwig and Black died together. Wolfgang helped them achieve that. Frankly, I think he did a beautiful thing."

"He carried Ludwig to that bed, Boom-Boom. He watched him have seizures until he was gone. He watched Black forget how to breathe."

"Yeah, I know. Wolfgang is smarter than us, King Junior. We get hung up in the suffering, and he doesn't."

Up the hall, Aretha and Wolfgang emerged from Cherry's room.

Boom-Boom slapped Junior's shoulder. "Go love your wife, kiddo."

"I'm not a kid," Junior snickered mid-sob.

"I'm older than you, yes you are." Boom-Boom smirked. "Go on."

Junior returned to the room. Being held aggravated Cherry's pain, so he stole a gurney, rolled it next to her bed and laid down with her.

"Your hair is all gray," She whispered. "Bowser never got to go all gray."

"Are you making fun of my hair?" He teased her.

"Yup. It's beautiful. I'm glad you kept it long." She grasped his topknot ponytail and smoothed it.

"My dad wore his hair long until he became king. He cut the braid off after his coronation."

Cherry smiled. Her messy hair stuck up off her head. The gray color clashed with the pastel green pillow cradling her head. "They think I'm dying tonight, so I have to prove them wrong."

She turned her head and drifted back to sleep. Despite what she said, her breathing got rougher and rougher as the night progressed.

Junior held her hand and rested his head on his forearm. Something on the gurney had a smell like bleach, vinegar and new plastic, and it took him back to the intensive care stays with his dad. Back to the days his brothers and sister were all alive and gathered around in watchful hope.

He tumbled into sleep without meaning to. Nobody disturbed him.

Insistent tapping on the wrist shook Junior out of a dreamless void. He opened his eyes. Cherry was sitting up with the blankets thrown off her gaunt legs.

"Junior?" Her voice sounded clear, like she wasn't sick at all.

"Cherry?" Junior sat up, rubbing his eyes. Sleepily, he blurted, "Happy birthday."

"Thanks. Now kidnap me, I want to bake a cake."

Still groggy, Junior stretched, "Mmh, what kind?"

"Chocolate, of course."

Cherry stood up from her bed. The back of her plain gray gown flopped open, showing her bare butt.

"Ooh, are you flashing me?" Junior grinned.

She wiggled it side to side and sat again. "I'll flash you any day, but I don't want to flash the castle."

"Sit tight."

Junior trampled upstairs to get her prettiest pajamas— they were flowy cotton pants with a kimono-style top, and they depicted pink cherry blossoms on a red background.

He returned downstairs to find Cherry brushing her teeth. She gave him a minty fresh kiss while he helped her change. Mischief glistened in her eyes.

"Okay, you big brute, kidnap me."

Laughing, Junior pulled a wheelchair out of the hall, moved all her IVs onto the rack attached to it and pushed her towards the door. Four Goombas waddled past.

"Everybody move, this is a kidnapping!" Junior shouted, and bolted.

Three Goombas scattered, one got squished. The squished one popped himself back into his regular shape and grumbled.

"Hold it!" Ostoad stepped across their path.

"Scoot. I'm leaving." Cherry folded her arms.

"I didn't discharge you, your majesty."

"I'm the queen, and what I say goes. I'm saying, so I'm going."

"And I'm the king, and this is a kidnapping." Junior smirked, his nostrils releasing curls of smoke in a mock threat.

Ostoad shook her speckle-capped head and got out of their way.

That morning, Aretha and Wolfgang walked in on Cherry and Junior mixing up cake batter. There was room set aside for Aretha to cook Wolfgang's ash oatmeal, so his breakfast routine wouldn't be too disrupted.

Wolfgang happily paced circles around the kitchen island, humming with his spectacular basso profundo voice. He was eighty-two years old, and he looked forty. Not a wrinkle on him. Just like Lemmy.

Cherry wanted to bake a chocolate Bundt cake. Koopas were notorious for theirs, so the Bundt cake pan was enormous. She had to triple everything in the recipe to fill it.

"This was the cake mom liked to make me on my birthday," Cherry said as she smeared butter into the mold and coated it in cocoa powder. Her gaunt, bony wrists flashed past the sleeves of her pajama top.

Wolfgang kept shooting her curious looks beneath his bushy white eyebrows. Aretha let him circle around the island and casually spooned oatmeal into his mouth whenever he passed her. She took a few bites herself using the same spoon.

"Gods, that smells so good," Aretha sniffed the cake batter.

Wolfgang tapped his tablet. "Chocolate."

"Yeah, it is!" Cherry smiled.

He giggled, flapping his hands between touching icons.

"Chocolate. King. King. Chocolate. Chocolate."

Junior stood back, taking video on his phone. He laughed until he couldn't breathe when Wolfgang picked up an egg and accidentally smashed it in his hand. Wolfgang sucked the slop off his palm, eggshell and all, before anybody could stop him.

"Did you just eat a raw egg?" Cherry eyed him.

He grinned, drooling eggshell chunks out between his teeth. She guffawed so hard she had to push her bolus button.

Outside the window, rain showers doused the castle gardens in gray gloom. Try as it might, it couldn't enter the lively kitchen where a family's mirth waved away death's cold shadow.

Everybody worked together to pour the chocolate cake batter into the Bundt pan. Cherry closed the oven and set the timer. She eased back into the wheelchair with a contented sigh and played with the sparkling Koopa shell diamond ring on her left ring finger.

"Feeling okay?" Junior asked.

Cherry grinned, eyes shining like the stones in her ring. Her, with her gaunt face, her big nose, her eyelashes, her freckles, her age spots and her wispy gray hair.

"It's my birthday. I feel amazing."

Junior shifted his weight and dull pain stabbed his hips. He made a face, wondering idly if Celine went through this with her knees.

Cherry moved the wheelchair closer to the counter and set the coffee maker to espresso.

"For the ganache," she winked.

A deep, thrumming rumble vibrated the kitchen as Wolfgang paced circles, humming. That was his content stim, he only did it when he felt perfectly at peace in a space.

Aretha took photos of him on her phone. She turned her lense to Junior and Cherry. Junior stuck two fingers up behind Cherry's head.

The hour passed in a breeze. Chocolate scents warmed the whole east wing of the castle when Junior helped Cherry take the huge cake out of the oven and flip it over onto the porcelain white platter.

Cherry heated a cup of cream to simmer. Aretha kept Wolfgang from digging into the cake prematurely. Junior fed him a handful of chocolate chips before dumping the rest into the simmering cream to melt. He held Wolfgang's hand and guided him through stirring the chocolate chips into the cream until the combination turned a delightful uniform brown.

"There, you've got it." Junior let go and watched Wolfgang work the whisk in circles. "Nice!"

Cherry beamed. "He can lick the whisk when we're done."

Wolfgang hopped in place excitedly. At Cherry's word, he squawked and licked that whisk as clean as a dishwasher.

Then they watched in awe while Cherry drizzled the ganache over the circular Bundt cake. Avalanches of chocolate poured along the sides with promises to delight their taste buds.

"Hold it! Before anybody cuts this cake…"

Junior fished a single birthday candle out of a drawer, lit it and stuck it into the top of the cake. He gave a three count on his fingers and he and Aretha sang happy birthday. Wolfgang clapped his hands in rhythm.

Cherry struggled to draw enough breath to blow out the candle. Junior subtly helped from over her shoulder. The tenacious, juddering flame finally whirled out into rising smoke.

"Yay!" Aretha clapped alongside Wolfgang.

Junior and Cherry cut the cake together, locked eyes and fed each other a bite. Just like at their wedding. Aretha got a great photo of that moment.

"My beautiful birthday wife," Junior whispered in her ear.

There would never be a better chocolate cake. The best miracle of all was Cherry got to enjoy her piece without throwing it up later.

By noon, Cherry's eyes glazed over from pain and fatigue. She wanted to go upstairs to their bed, so Junior took her up via the elevator. Once there, she wouldn't let him lift her out of the wheelchair.

"These are my last steps, Junior. Let me take them."

Cherry took those four feeble, flinching steps, turned the sheets down on her side of the bed and eased herself in.

Ostoad was kind enough to return Beatrice. Junior transferred the half-empty IV bags onto the vine-encrusted IV pole and rolled it closer to the bed.

He lit the fireplace using his fire breath, filling the chilly room in dancing orange warmth.

"I'll save you a spot," Cherry murmured. She gripped her bolus button and pushed it. "When I get to where they're all waiting, I'll make sure nobody takes your spot."

Fresh rain blew against the windows, battering them in droplet constellations. The tears skittering onto Junior's face matched the drops running down the window panes.

He sniffled, drawing the sheets up to her chest. "Saving me a seat, how nice."

She giggled, brushing the tears off his cheek with her thumbs. Blue crept into her nail beds, a reminder of the future. "I'm so glad we happened. I don't regret a damn thing."

"I have a couple regrets, none of them include you."

"Oh, yeah? Like what?"

"Um…Scott. Just…we didn't part on good terms, and then he died. I hate that."

"Then I'll tell him you're sorry." Cherry clung to his index finger.

Rain beat a steady susurrus on the windows.

"I love you more than I'll love anyone ever again," Junior whispered in her ear. New tears trickled onto his face to replace the ones she wiped off.

This was a goodbye, and they both knew it.

He held her gaze, his russet to her sapphire. Their eyes glistened in the lambent firelight.

"Can we stay in love like this forever?" Cherry murmured.

"Yeah," He kissed her, "We'll be this forever."

"I'm glad."

She closed her eyes and fell asleep while he massaged her hands with his thumbs.

Minutes stretched on into hours. Junior opened a hidden door by the fireplace and added another log to the fire to keep the chilly room warm.

Lightning lit the windows in brilliant flashes, but the thunder stayed far away.

Aretha brought up a tray of dinner. Light minestrone soup. Mario's recipe, judging by the scent. A deep, large, Koopa-sized bowl for Junior, and a little cup with a straw for Cherry.

Junior tucked into his soup and Aretha stroked Cherry's cheek to gently rouse her.

"Hi, I brought soup."

"Dad?" Cherry whispered.

"Shhh. Here, sweetie." Aretha helped her get the straw into her mouth.

Cherry struggled to swallow three mouthfuls. After that, she pushed the cup away. "I'm marrying the best guy in the world tomorrow."

"Really?" Aretha glanced at Junior, who paused to listen in.

"Mmhmm."

Junior almost spat out his soup snickering. Heat rushed to his face. He kept eating.

"He's excited to marry you, too. He gushes about you all the time, you know, he's that in love with you," Aretha said, voice trembling.

"He's everything I want in a Koopa." Cherry mumbled, fading away towards sleep again.

Aretha stroked her hair and kissed her forehead. Junior took the soup cup from her hand and held her while she sobbed against his shoulder.

There it was again, the pain he wished he could protect her from.

"She's so at peace about it," Aretha whispered. "Are you?"

"I think so. Doesn't mean I'm looking forward to it. But I don't want her to hurt anymore." He kissed her cheek. "I'll be okay. Will you?"

"I'll miss her."

"Me, too."

Thunder rumbled outside as Aretha gathered up the tray and padded down the trapdoor staircase.

Cherry's breathing slowed, yet stayed steady.

Dusk darkened the sky more than the bloated clouds when Wolfgang popped his head over the trapdoor. He hugged his portable keyboard awkwardly against his shoulder.

"Aah?" The noise rose at the end like a question, and somehow Junior understood it as if actual words were spoken.

"Sure." Junior whispered.

Wolfgang sat on the floor by the fireplace. His immense shadow spanned the wall like a guardian gargoyle hunched over the bed.

He played Ludwig's Interstellar and followed it up with his own piece, Death Is The Road To Awe. Without pausing, he segued into Together We Will Live Forever, and it always amazed Junior that fingers so clumsy at everything else could be that nimble on a keyboard.

But Wolfgang said something through his song choices. He played it for Roy, as a promise, and now he promised to take Cherry's memory with him in his music. More than that, he hoped his playing carried her closer to peace the same way he carried Ludwig to Black's side.

Wolfgang hit the final chords and rubbed his claws along his plastron as he rocked back and forth, his white hair gleaming in the firelight.

"She loves you for that. Go give her a kiss," Junior whispered.

Nodding, Wolfgang padded to the bedside and kissed her cheek. She didn't respond, not even a flutter of the eyelids. He nuzzled the top of her head.

"Sleep." Wolfgang signed. "Peace."

He kissed Junior's cheek, took his keyboard and thudded slowly down the staircase.

Junior climbed into bed with Cherry.

Hours pressed onward, weighing heavily in the darkness outside.

Cherry breathed in short, shallow gasps with pauses in between, and her mouth gaped open as her muscles relaxed. Junior smoothed her favorite cherry lip balm over her lips to keep them comfortably moist.

"Thanks for putting your bandaid on my toe when we were kids," he whispered to her sleeping face. "Everything that happened after was amazing. I love you so much, Cherry. You and I…we were great."

Junior dozed off without meaning to. He woke with a start to Cherry tugging on his hand.

"Huh?"

"What time is it?" She rasped, voice barely audible. "Is it still my birthday?"

Junior bumped the clock off the nightstand with his tail, hiding the actual ten o'clock time.

"No, it's after midnight."

She stared at him through unfocused, drooping eyes. "Is it okay if I go?"

Grief stabbed his chest and stung his eyes. The same pit he got in his stomach when his dad, siblings and their partners died opened anew. There was no being ready for this, no matter how many times he suffered through it.

Junior pushed the bolus button on her IV remote. He scooted over to pull her into his arms and stroke her hair. "If it hurts too much to stay, then let go. It's okay with me."

Cherry caressed his snout and closed her eyes again. Pallor leached into her skin while Junior watched over her. She breathed just like Bowser, her jaw gaping open at inhale and falling shut at exhale, but the pulse in her wrist continued to throb.

Junior sobbed quietly, dreading their imminent separation and hoping to keep her pain at bay. He pushed the bolus button every time her forehead wrinkled. There was never a moment where she wasn't in his arms.

The neglected fire in the fireplace shrank to orange embers. Cherry's inhales were no more than faint sips with lengthening pauses between exhales.

At midnight, her tongue shifted in her mouth and her eyes rolled back.

"It's okay, Cherry." Junior sniffed, kissing her forehead. "Shhh, relax. Let it all go."

She gasped. The embers in the fireplace sputtered out. She gasped again. That was her last breath.

Cherry died at one minute past midnight because she refused to leave on her birthday.

Junior held her in the quiet darkness, listening to the wind bluster against the windows. He didn't shatter into helpless tears like he expected to. Disturbing the silence with anything louder than sniffling seemed sacrilegious.

"You're so brave, Cherry." Junior whispered in her ear. "You beautiful, amazing woman. I love you so much."

He lit the sconces on the sides of the headboard with his breath, giving the room a warm glow.

Unlike Bowser, Cherry's mouth was easy to close, he only needed a rolled up washcloth under her chin.

Junior made the tearful trip to Aretha's room. She was still awake when he rapped on the door. The tears on his face said it all, and she sobbed as she headed upstairs to where Cherry lay.

Wolfgang slept peacefully on his belly in his bed. Junior rapped on his shell until he stirred and lifted his head.

"Cherry died," he said. No minced words.

Blinking, Wolfgang sat up, yanked Junior against his chest and enfolded him in his huge arms. He was such a large Koopa that it felt eerily like one of Bowser's hugs. His clean charcoal scent wasn't the same. He cupped the back of Junior's head in one of his massive hands, rocked back and forth and hummed.

The gesture had such raw, real, unguarded love behind it that it smashed through the walls Junior erected in his mind and unleashed the grief trapped inside.

Junior clung to him and bawled. He just watched his wife of eighty three years take her last breath. Time swept her away like everybody else and there wasn't a thing he could do about it except kiss her goodbye.

"You've been alive almost as long as we were married. You and Aretha," Junior choked between heaving sobs.

Wolfgang hunched his shoulders, ensconcing him closer against his chest. He still wore his silicone spiked collar that spelled out King Wolfgang.

Cherry's death devastated Junior beyond measure, but he plodded on because he promised her he would.

The funeral he planned for her rivaled Peach's in grandness and beauty. He held it outside in the dewy, flowering garden by the hedge maze.

Everyone mourned their lost queen. The courtyard alone held standing room only, and still more watched on TV. People left flowers by the bottom of the hill the castle stood on.

Junior dressed Cherry in her favorite puffy-sleeved red dress with the gold threads and lacy hem. She was barefoot when they met, so he left her barefoot and chose to paint her fingernails and toenails to match her dress.

Aretha did Cherry's makeup, putting on just enough to make her pretty without caking her face, and placed Peach's tiara on her thin silver hair. Cherry looked beautiful, a woman who lived a long life surrounded by people who loved her.

Wolfgang participated, too. With Aretha's help, he picked the liner for Cherry's coffin. He chose white velvet with tiny red cherries embroidered into it. She would've loved it.

Cherry didn't want a clear coffin, so Junior gave her a translucent one instead. Polychromatic crystal over frosted glass. Just enough to see she was inside, but only as a blurry, indistinct shape.

Junior laid a single yellow tulip in her hands before he kissed her lips for the last time. His tears dripped onto her face as he closed the coffin lid.

Just like Bowser did for Peach, Junior heaped red flowers on her coffin. Tulips, this time, because that was the first flower he gave her.

Part of the funeral included a cortège through Koopa City and Toadstool Central, the new name for the city near the old Mushroom castle.

The worst part of the service for him was watching Toad— or another, younger person who looked like Toad— take the Mushroom crown, orb and scepter off the coffin at the end of the ceremony and place them on their royal cushions to be taken away. Separating Cherry from her royal regalia signified the end of her reign.

Cherry was interred on the hill with Mario, Peach, Bowser, Luigi and Daisy. Her statue joined theirs six months later.

That winter was the coldest Junior remembered, with blizzards raging for weeks. Even the weather cried over Cherry.

Peter, the Piranha Plant, didn't survive it. Junior noticed him hanging limply out of his pipe while clearing snow off the balcony. He couldn't believe he cried over a plant, but Peter was special. It hurt to drag his withered remains out of the pipe. He crushed him up into mulch to feed the roses in the pots.

Winter blew itself away. The sun came out and the snow melted.

In the spring, Junior planted a cherry tree on the west side of the castle, and it would one day blossom into a forest covering the countryside. The land was declared protected, so nobody could tear it down to build on it.

.o

Junior took the audacious step of abdicating his throne following Cherry's death. The compound trauma and grief from losing so many people kept affecting his decisions, and he knew he was no longer able to be the king his people deserved.

His statement to the public caused a stir, and he took no questions about it.

After a lot of deliberation with the people he hoped to be his successors and obtaining their consent to take the throne, he held a press conference stating why he was stepping down. Then he declared Wolfgang Amadeus Koopason and Aretha Koopa as the new king and queen of the Koopa-Mushroom empire.

Koopas didn't have to be married to be king and queen. Siblings were rulers in the past, with their spouses earning the title of consorts, so it wasn't unheard of. Bowser got the throne by virtue of being a cousin four times removed of Felix, the king before him who never had heirs.

A lot of people questioned whether Wolfgang could hack it as king, but they didn't know him like Junior did.

Their coronation ceremony commenced that autumn.

Boom-Boom was the officiant. His voice got gruffer with age, so his shouted oaths had extra crackle.

Wolfgang and Aretha both asked to utilize the Mushroom crown, orb and scepter during their coronation, to show their love to the Mushroom Kingdom— they wouldn't be rulers if it wasn't for Cherry and Junior uniting their kingdoms.

Wolfgang said all his vows via his tablet. He wore gold ear defenders, and only took them off for the brief time he wore the crown.

As Junior knelt to place the collar around Wolfgang's neck, Wolfgang cupped his face between his hands and kissed his forehead. Love and affection radiated off him like heat from the sun.

Aretha designed an iridescent white royal collar studded in glittering diamonds. Wolfgang's was dark red leather with silver spikes and letters spelling out his name.

When it was time for them to assemble their torches and roar, Aretha's bell-like howl rang off the walls, and Wolfgang's tenebrous bellow vibrated everyone's chests.

Junior kept his royal title on paper, could still make official decisions, continued to wear his royal collar and publicly accepted the title of King Father. He stayed in the castle and became Aretha's and Wolfgang's most trusted advisor.

Wolfgang went down in history as King Wolfgang the Silent because he never spoke a word. With Junior's and Aretha's help, he proved himself an amazing leader. He prevented a war with the Kongs by standing in the center of the battlefield where both armies prepared to fight, and didn't budge until both sides agreed to talk. History books named that moment Wolfgang's Gambit.

The dispute turned out to be over mining resources and food transport.

Aretha earned the name Queen Aretha the Respected after she negotiated with the Kongs to reach a peaceful resolution. She sent them farming equipment to help them rebuild their lost crops and signed a deal to share mining resources. The Kongs responded by sending medicine and construction resources. Their kingdoms went from foes to friends in just over a year.

People had to get used to how Wolfgang conducted meetings. If they happened in person, he paced the room, growling and puffing smoke over the shoulders of anyone who said something he didn't like. If they were three-dimensional video meetings, he paced out of frame a lot. It didn't take long for his audiences to learn they could keep talking and he would type a response when he felt like it.

Becoming king didn't change him. He was still the same old Wolfgang.

Life wobbled into a new, friable normal, leaving everyone time to work through their grief.

.o

Floor, a biographer, asked to create a documentary about Wolfgang's day to day life, which Wolfgang okayed. It would be called Spectrum Life.

And that was how the Thunder brothers came along— Gaspar, Balthazar and Melchior Thunder. Gaspar and Balthazar were part of the film crew, and Melchior went wherever they did.

This ragtag crew hung around the castle for a few days to get Wolfgang used to their presence before they started recording. Wolfgang got final say on everything used, from footage to audio, so nothing went into the documentary that he didn't personally approve of.

He presented the world with everything. Being fed, bathed, changed, dressed for symphonies, dressed for royal meetings, his typing, playing piano, transcribing his music, orchestral rehearsals done in tandem with Aretha, and his interactions among his family. All he asked the Thunder crew to cut out was the meltdown he had at the mention of Joanne. That became a conversational no-fly zone, and she wasn't mentioned again.

Balthazar, the eldest brother, revealed himself as a brash, loud, muscular Koopa with saw-blade teeth, red eyes, a thick purple Mohawk and a matching shell full of spikes. He daringly arm-wrestled Junior to a draw and cooked Birdo eggs like a champion.

Melchior, the middle brother, was a skinny hunched-over Koopa whose beady emerald eyes lit up when he smiled. He wore his black hair styled in a bowl cut around his stubby horns. Irregular spikes dotted his black shell like sesame seeds. He had a visible facial difference— his snout looked disproportionately short with oversized nostrils, scarring from a cleft palate repair and small, crooked teeth that didn't align. It gave him a charming open-mouthed smile.

Like Wolfgang, Melchior was non-speaking autistic and communicated via his handheld tablet. He greatly enjoyed putting handfuls of rocks or beads into peoples' hands, giggling and running away.

And Gaspar, the youngest, stood back the most. Him, with his maroon hair slicked backwards off his black eyes and spiked maroon shell, proved himself so introverted and shy that it took three days to get his name out of him. He was the polar opposite to loud, extroverted Balthazar.

Melchior could feed himself and use the toilet, so he did a lot to help Wolfgang eat meals and change his briefs during their visits with each other. They started showing affection through sidelong looks and hooking their pinkie fingers together and squeezing. There was a lot of simultaneous, synchronized stimming.

Then Junior walked by the hedge maze one day and saw Wolfgang lean over and give Melchior a kiss. Melchior squeaked in surprise and threw himself against Wolfgang's chest. They kissed again, clumsy and giggly.

He smiled and kept walking.

Another time, Junior discovered Wolfgang mounting Melchior from behind in the middle of the living room floor. He left immediately, told everybody to stay away from there, and didn't go back until he saw them emerge. How Melchior could walk after the enormity Wolfgang buried in him was a mystery he didn't think too hard about.

"You should do that somewhere more private," Junior muttered to Wolfgang once he walked out.

"Do what?" Melchior typed, face smug.

Junior eyed him and crossed his arms. "I saw you two having sex. Do you care if anybody walks in on you?"

Wolfgang crinkled his nose and touched his tablet. "King. Fuck anywhere. Dads did."

Melchior guffawed so hard he snorted. He typed, "Yes. I like big dicks. Fuck me anywhere."

Junior laughed for days and left the matter alone. If they wanted to have sex everywhere, fine.

They did it anywhere they could get away with it. On the stairs. In the sensory room. Behind the thrones. They were so quiet, unlike Ludwig and Black. Melchior rarely made any noise, and Wolfgang emitted the same droning groans he did while stimming.

Then Junior discovered Melchior signaled he wanted it by patting himself on both shoulders, and Wolfgang went after him with fierce eyes like a Big Bertha about to lap up whatever poor unfortunate soul came too close to the water's surface. Junior knew that gesture meant get out of there.

At least Wolfgang had the sense to not respond to that signal during meetings. Melchior tried a few times, much to everyone's amusement and annoyance.

Their budding romance made it into the documentary. Unplanned, but a delightful addition.

.o

Balthazar brought Wolfgang into the dining room alone and conducted a stunning on-camera interview. Of course he would know how to word his questions, he had an autistic brother with similar needs.

Most of his inquiries got the briefest of answers, but one elicited a flood.

"What do you remember about your dads, King Wolfgang?" He leaned forward, gently tapping on the table and signing what he asked. "King Wolfgang? What do you remember about your dads?"

Wolfgang rubbed his claws up and down his plastron as he rocked, mulling the question over in his head. His pink eyes gleamed from the daylight coming through the window while he typed on his tablet at length, being extraordinarily picky about which words he chose.

He glanced across the table from beneath his bushy eyebrows as if asking Balthazar if he was ready for his answer.

Balthazar folded his hands on the stone tabletop and leaned forward, expressing silent interest.

Wolfgang hit the green talk icon and sucked his thumb while his tablet pronounced his response.

"Love always. Warm, care. Music always. Quiet sometimes. Kisses before goodbye. Arms, hold. Hands, feed, love. Safe, home. Free. Free. Free. Love dads. Remember always, pictures inside. Music. Hope. Free."

Balthazar grinned, tapping on the table. "What about Melchior? How do you feel about him?"

Wolfgang laughed, it sounded like a cross between Black's wheeze, a cough and camera shutters. He typed, flapped his hands and pressed the talk icon.

"Funny face. Nice sex. Love, much."

Balthazar guffawed so loud it echoed off the walls. "You two did that?"

"Yes. Often."

He howled, holding his sides.

Footsteps thudded outside, the door swung open and Melchior crashed the interview to nibble on the side of Wolfgang's neck. He poured a handful of pebbles from outside into his open hand, giggled and skittered out, slamming the door behind him.

Wolfgang told Balthazar to leave that in the final edit.

"One more question, King Wolfgang," Balthazar lowered his voice. "Why did you call your first symphony The Fountain? Can you tell me why?"

Wolfgang didn't answer in words. He snatched up the handheld camera instead and rushed to the fountain outside with Balthazar hot on his heels. Once outdoors, he switched the camera to film at high speed.

Taking Balthazar's hand, he plunged it into the water. He splashed, waved his hands and reached towards the fountain spray, all while aiming the camera at everything he did.

None of it made sense until Balthazar checked the slow motion footage later. Wolfgang showed how water droplets flew off his hands in scintillating, polychromatic spheres, the dancing caustics at the bottom of the fountain, the way the spray curled like crystals against the sky and the shimmers of moisture clinging to his fingertips.

His conducting gestures looked exactly the same. The glittery baton Cherry gave him reminded him of the droplets sparkling in the sun.

Never did Junior understand him clearer than after seeing that footage. Balthazar edited the penultimate song from Wolfgang's symphony over that montage, immortalizing him forever in spheres of crystalline euphoria.

Wolfgang's joy by the fountain became the final exclamation point on the documentary.

The Thunder brothers earned the full respect of the Koopa-Toadstool household by showing everyone a private screening. They had five hours of usable footage. Wolfgang gave the green light, and it aired an hour a day over the course of five days.

Spectrum Life won awards, and the Koopa-Toadstool empire saw how their king lived.

.o

Aretha and Balthazar fell into a whirlwind romance of their own. He won her over with his outgoing personality. All it took was a dinner date, a daring kiss by the fountain and a stunning waltz under the stars to win her heart.

"I'm twice your age!" Aretha said.

"We aren't children, your majesty, and you are very beautiful."

They laughed and danced again.

Balthazar popped the question after the first date, just like Junior did with Cherry. Aretha accepted his proposal.

The wedding was huge, as big as Junior's wedding to Cherry. Balthazar obtained the title of king's consort.

Together, they created three children. It wasn't easy on Aretha, since she had children when most Koopas were the grandparents of adult children, yet she never expressed regret.

The first two were a surprise in the form of identical twins inside one egg. They received Larry's Serum via injection into the yolk as soon as the egg was laid, and the Larry test that confirmed no Crash found two twitching heart sacs.

Larry did it. He ended Crash for future generations.

Junior took hold of Janet's hand, knelt at her feet and cried when she told him the good news. He considered it an honor to hear it alongside Aretha before it made headlines.

That winter, Aretha welcomed her melanistic girls, Eartha and Whitney. She kissed their little noses as they nudged out of their eggshell. They sported wide snouts like their grandpa, Morton, and had Aretha's coily hair.

Four years later, Aretha produced a third child, also treated with Larry's Serum.

The third child, with coily hair that came unmistakably from Aretha and whose green scales, purple hair coloring, purple shell, long snout and red eyes represented Balthazar, would later declare himself their son and be reintroduced as Jimi Koopa.

Aretha remembered Joanne calling Wolfgang Justin, which wasn't his name, so she sought to erase Jimi's dead-name from history and nobody spoke or wrote it again. Balthazar accidentally said it one time. He realized it, apologized and vowed to forget Jimi's old name.

As for the twins, Aretha made sure people could tell Eartha and Whitney apart since they were easily mixed up. She styled Whitney's coily hair with star-shaped hair bands or barrettes, and used hearts for Eartha's. As they grew up into children, they would carry this theme on with their jewelry choices. Especially Whitney, who loved necklaces and bracelets dripping in stars.

Before Jimi realized he was a boy and told everyone, Aretha styled his coily purple hair into braids with lightning bolt hair bands and barrettes. He always seemed miffed at his reflection, but it would be a few years before he named why.

Balthazar helped the kids put on disguises to go out in public without getting hounded. Nothing major, just cute baseball caps to hide their hair and blue shell paint that came off in the bath. It reminded Junior of the time Cherry took him outside-outside for Halloween.

They got to do a lot— visit parks, play in public and cause a little trouble when they got away from Balthazar once— without photographers tailing them everywhere.

.o

The kids accepted Wolfgang and Melchior, and treated them as they did everybody else in the family.

Eartha got curious once and went up to Wolfgang, asking, "How come you don't go potty on the potty? I thought grownups don't need diapers."

Wolfgang sucked his thumb and typed back, "Some do."

"Do some adults need to be fed like you too?"

"Yes." Wolfgang signed.

Melchior squawked from where he sat on the floor by the fireplace. More specifically, he sat on the famous Somersault Rug.

"Different brains," he typed, patting his legs. "Different needs. Still people."

She giggled, climbing onto Melchior's shell. "You're cool!"

"Cool. Cool." Wolfgang typed. He waved his hands and crouched next to Melchior. They kissed each other.

"I want kisses too!" Eartha pouted.

They gave her kisses, and then they tickled her sides until she squealed.

Junior watched Eartha play with her autistic uncles on the exact spot Iggy went into status epilepticus decades ago. She had no clue her nascent life returned beauty to a place that once housed trauma.

And Junior never forgot the morning he walked in on the trio putting swear words into Wolfgang's tablet and making it speak. Wolfgang stood nearby, giggling while they fed him oatmeal and scrambled eggs.

He started teaching them swear words in Koopa Sign, reminding Junior of the time Ludwig taught him those same swears.

Junior crossed his arms. "Now, now, you all understand these are naughty words we don't say willy-nilly, right?"

"We say 'poop' outside, not shit," Whitney laughed, baring her two sharp bottom teeth.

Junior smirked. They had sense!

That morning, he showed those troublemakers how to make Bowser bacon. They loved it.

Melchior crashed through the kitchen, snatched Jimi up onto his shoulders and ran circles around the dining room table.

Balthazar walked in on the chaos. He took photos on his phone and shook his head.

"Kids."

"Yup," Junior nodded.

Eartha climbed onto his back. "Uncle Junior, you smell funny."

"Oh, really? I'll smell even funnier. Watch."

Junior crouched and farted so loud it startled everyone. He counted down mentally from three to one, and watched everybody flee his side from the smell.

"Ew!" Jimi yelled from the living room.

Junior cackled.

But the tragedy of time wasn't done striking yet.

.o

Boom-Boom dedicated his life to serving everyone in the castle in honor of Bowser.

When an electrical fire broke out in the gym and the sprinkler system malfunctioned, he rushed into the smoke and flames to pull Jimi, Eartha and Whitney out a third-story window. He threw down ropes and brought them safely to the ground on his shell.

Junior found him coughing with the kids safe in his arms.

"Aretha, they're over here!" He yelled. "Hey, Boom-Boom, you okay there?"

Boom-Boom dazedly led the frightened children to Junior. He shook his head no, coughed and muttered, "Get 'em checked out."

Then he collapsed, gasping for breath.

His quick action saved the triplets' lives at the expense of his own. The heat and smoke scorched his lungs, and he died despite valiant resuscitation efforts. He was a hundred and forty years old.

All three kids checked out fine. Whitney needed eye drops because the smoke caused an allergic reaction, but beyond that they escaped unscathed.

Aretha joined Junior in the morgue as he sat staring at Boom-Boom's lifeless corpse on the slab. His face was relaxed and peaceful, like he accepted death when faced with it.

"He was a noble Koopa," she said, petting the top of his head.

Junior gave Boom-Boom a full royal funeral to honor his service and had him interred in the lava under the drawbridge of Bowser's castle.

An iron plaque on the drawbridge stated, Boom-Boom, loyal servant to three kings.

The fire stayed contained to the gym and the small living room above it. It took three years to repair the damage and erase all traces of smoke or flames. Junior pulled some of Wendy's old furniture out of storage. Her lush purple couch, oak end tables and gold rugs looked nice by the fireplace.

.o

Even Lakitu succumbed to age. Nobody knew how old he was. Junior found him in the middle of the castle hedge maze, curled up as if he laid down to sleep and never woke up.

He cried— Lakitu was the last person he knew who saw Bowser with his own eyes.

It rained for the first time in history over the volcano when Junior entombed Lakitu in the northeast wall. His clouds knew he died, and they mourned.

And the cruelty of time continued.

.o

Balthazar died very young at forty-nine. The autopsy found stage three Crash. He and his brothers were adopted as infants, so he never got checked for it. Everyone thought Aretha's genes carried the Crash, but it came from both of them.

Aretha was with Balthazar when he collapsed into horrific agonal breathing in the middle of breakfast, and no resuscitation revived him. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene.

Junior woke up because all the chaos had Wolfgang and Melchior locked in simultaneous meltdowns that required immediate attention, so he didn't find out what happened until Balthazar was in the morgue.

Gaspar took over helping Melchior and Wolfgang, freeing Junior to check on Aretha and the kids.

Jimi sat in the living room in silent shock. He saw it all happen. Whitney and Eartha rushed home from the movies to find out they lost their dad. They were distraught. Junior held them while they sobbed. He cried with them because he knew this pain. Watching Aretha scream and pound the floor broke his heart into a million pieces.

Wolfgang embraced Melchior as he wept over his brother's lifeless body in the morgue.

Gaspar ran to get tested, and discovered stage two crash. He had stents put in the day after Aretha lava-buried Balthazar in Bowser's volcano.

Melchior couldn't be tested. He melted down violently at the sight of needles. The echocardiogram was all doctors got, and it showed abnormalities in his aorta, mitral and tricuspid valves that pointed to Crash. Everybody had to cross their fingers and hope he lived a nice, long life.

.o

A year after Balthazar's shocking death, Wolfgang married Melchior in a small, intimate ceremony. Throwing a giant wedding would've been too much for both of them to handle— Wolfgang barely made it through his coronation. They allowed a two-person camera crew to record it and share it the day after.

Junior officiated. They said their vows via their tablets. At the end, they somersaulted over the fire pit together and came up laughing.

For them, married life was a dream. Anytime Aretha and Wolfgang traveled, Gaspar and Melchior came along.

Gaspar became Aretha's personal attendant and comforter. Somewhere along the way, he fell in love with her. They had quite the torrid affair, though they never married.

Sadly, Gaspar had a heart attack despite the stents. He underwent bypass surgery on his left anterior descending coronary artery, developed an infection afterward and died in Aretha's arms of sepsis. He was barely fifty-four years old.

Melchior wailed at losing his other brother. He ran away off the castle grounds, and it took three days to find him. Wolfgang didn't sleep at all until his beloved was back at his side.

Aretha held in her cry until her kids weren't around her to see. Junior held her while she wept and raged. He hated watching her go through the grief of losing two lovers. One was traumatic enough!

But Aretha carried on for her children. She wiped her eyes, squared her shoulders and raised them.

.o

Whitney and Eartha grew up to take over Wendy's floundering WendyCorp business. They renamed it Koopa Beauty Enterprises and became forces to reckon with in the industry. Their fresh ideas changed the landscape of fashion, jewelry and makeup.

They broke away from identical hairstyles once they turned eighteen. Whitney clipped her hair short against her scalp, while Eartha kept hers long and braided.

When Jimi turned eighteen, he underwent plastic surgery to have prosthetic horns implanted on his head. The hormones he took deepened his voice and gave him the muscle mass he wanted, yet didn't prompt horn growth. Not all Koopas grew them— none of Junior's siblings had any— but Jimi wanted them.

He emerged from the procedure with beautiful curved horns like Junior's, and he smiled at his reflection.

Jimi grew his hair out for a year after the procedure. It looked short at a glance because of its coily nature, but the longest strands reached his shoulders when pulled straight.

Aretha, Whitney and Eartha helped him style his purple hair into locs once his surgical sites healed.

Junior watched them do it, fascinated. They took sections of his hair, rubbed in locking gel and twirled the gathered strands in circles using the teeth of a comb. It took three months of diligent care for his locs to smooth out the way he wanted them. He shed tears when he looked in the mirror one morning as his locs fell around his horns and framed his shoulders.

"I finally look like me!"

Aretha kissed his forehead. "I love you, my son."

To celebrate, Junior took Jimi downstairs to the basement level and pointed to something covered in a gray sheet.

"If you can get that working, it's yours. Good luck."

Jimi dragged the sheet off the dusty old Koopa Clown Car that hadn't seen daylight in nearly a century. Its smiling face gleamed under the overhead lights.

"Whoa, is this what I think it is?"

Junior grinned. "Yup."

Two weeks later, he watched Jimi's purple locs whip back as he flew the Koopa Clown Car for the first time.

"Wahaha! Look at me, mom!"

"Be careful!" Aretha shouted up to him.

"He's fine." Junior smiled knowingly, "I flew that thing before I was ten."

The Koopa Clown Car lasted five more months. Then it stalled over the ocean. Jimi got out fine, the Koopa Clown Car sank into the deep, never to be seen again. A passing cruise ship was quite shocked to see the prince of the Koopa-Toadstool empire swimming in the sea. The ship's captain plucked him out and returned him home post-haste.

It took Jimi three days to wash the seawater smell out of his locs. Whitney and Eartha made fun of him for smelling like fish. Junior was so grateful Jimi got home in one piece that he gave the ship's captain a Medal of Honor.

"I'm glad that blasted old thing is gone, it was a dangerous toy," Aretha grumbled. "What were you thinking, giving that to him?"

Junior laughed for days. Aretha had no idea she sounded exactly like Celine used to. He decided not to send out a search party, let the old Koopa Clown Car rust at the bottom of the ocean. It was a relic of a time long past.

Life smoothed into equilibrium and cruelly spun out again three years later.

.o

Junior awoke at four in the morning when Aretha shook his shoulder.

"I didn't want to be alone. I think I'm about to die," she said, panting. "My chest hurts. I'm scared, uncle Junior."

"Aretha?" Junior sat up, heart racing as if watching an oncoming train he couldn't escape. He pulled her to him, one arm around her shoulders. "Hang on, I'll call for help."

"Tell my kids I love them."

"Aretha, I love you, and so do they."

"Don't leave me alone."

"I won't. I'm here."

Junior held her and dialed on his phone with his thumb. He told the medics downstairs that Aretha was having a heart attack. They confirmed they were on their way.

His stomach dropped and his mind spun. Here it came again, the cold, dark, cruel thing that kept snatching up everyone he loved. He felt so distant from the pain in the moment. All he wanted to do was focus on being present for Aretha.

He shoved the phone aside and hugged her, petting her cheek. Her graying hair was twisted in a single bun atop her head, the way she wore it to sleep.

Aretha stared into his eyes, her face dusky in terror. Her hand went to her chest, an all-too-familiar gesture.

"I don't want to die! Help me." She sobbed, tears streaming onto her cheeks. Just like Roy, she pleaded. "Please, please, help me."

Junior kissed her brow and rubbed her shoulder. "They'll be here soon. You're not going to die, Aretha. Everything is going to be okay."

Cold sweat dotted her forehead. She shook her head, like she knew.

"Uncle Roy was right. It's not okay. Help me. Please, I—"

Her face froze in wide-eyed horror. Everything she was faded as her eyes rolled back into her skull.

"Aretha!" Junior screamed at her. "Aretha, stay with me!"

He popped her shell off, laid her flat on the floor by his bed and began chest compressions. His aged body wasn't used to doing this anymore, so every movement hurt like ice picks to his hips. Her ribs bowed under his palms as he pumped her heart the way Boom-Boom taught him when he was a kid.

She kept gasping. Agonal breathing. Her arms flopped like loose ropes at her sides. Because of her melanism, the inside of her mouth took on a weird purplish-black hue.

Whitney scurried upstairs at the sound of his wailing. She grabbed the AED and got the pads positioned as medics poured in through the elevator to take over.

"Aretha, come on!" Junior shouted, holding her hand between defibrillator shocks. "Please! I said you weren't going to die, you can't die!"

The medics intubated her brutally fast. Junior grabbed the ambu bag and breathed for her. Nobody stopped him.

They got a rhythm, and lost it, and got it, and lost it again. Aretha's eyes rolled beneath their lids.

Medics worked on her long enough for Jimi and Eartha to arrive.

"Mom!" Eartha sobbed, clinging to Whitney.

Jimi took Aretha's hand while the medics pounded on her chest.

"I love you, mom," he murmured through tears.

All attempts to restart Aretha's heart failed. The medics tried everything. Epinephrine shots, defibrillator shocks, vasopressors, the works. Her heart wouldn't hold onto a rhythm. She started in v-fib, went into v-tach, fell into torsades de pointes, shot back into fine v-fib and finally stayed on asystole.

"You can't stop!" Junior roared when they called it. He kept squeezing the bag, scowling at them.

"I'm sorry, sire," Lewis, the Hammer Brother medic, cupped his wrist. "We've been at this for an hour. I'm sorry. Queen Aretha Koopa is dead."

Aretha's eyes and mouth gaped unnaturally wide open. Like Morton. Like Bowser.

Whitney screamed. Eartha bawled. Jimi sobbed.

Junior gave Aretha her last breath by squeezing the bag a final time. He gathered her limp form to his chest, her soft bun scraping against his cheek. The endotracheal tube and ambu bag hung out of her open jaws like morbid jewelry. All he saw was the tiny, hour-old hatchling Morton placed in his arms exactly a century ago, and he wailed.

"She's just a baby, she shouldn't know this!" Junior cried, choking on his tears. "No, no, this isn't fair!"

Every old wound on his soul ripped open and bled rivers. Aretha died on his bedroom floor, surrounded by her family. Death wrenched her out of his grasp. He had his hands on her, and she died anyway.

Wolfgang slept through the whole thing. Whitney had to waylay Melchior from coming in while the medics took Aretha's body away in a bag.

Junior didn't tell either of them what happened until she was downstairs, laid out on the table in the morgue and extubated.

Wolfgang settled his head on her chest, sucked his thumb and closed his eyes without a sound. Melchior sat by her feet and cried softly as he rocked back and forth.

Pain stabbed through Junior's chest. He took the elevator up a level to Celine's floor, gasping. LeAnn, his blue-shelled Koopa Troopa cardiologist at that time, hooked him up to an ECG and ran blood tests.

No heart attack. Just panic.

Lewis gave him Ativan and LeAnn talked him into breathing deeper, and after that he didn't remember because the drugs put him to sleep.

To add insult to injury, Lewis watched how Junior hobbled around on his arthritic hips and suggested he invest in a cane. He even brought one the next day, a green metal quad cane with a black palm grip. Junior took the cane when he left and threw it in the bedroom closet. He had a family to watch over, he didn't have time for this cane shit!

.o

Wolfgang took over telling the public that Aretha died. Junior helped him transcribe his message into complete sentences. Once the cameras rolled, Wolfgang pushed the talk button on his tablet and stared into the lens. He made eye contact with everyone watching, sharing their sorrow.

Junior handled the press conferences. Jimi, Eartha and Whitney put the funeral together. It was a massive event that took a month to plan and execute.

They weren't strangers to death. They saw their dad and his brother die. But Aretha's sudden demise rocked the castle.

Hot summer sun beat down the day the Koopa family lowered Aretha's shell into the lava where Balthazar and Gaspar were interred.

Wolfgang wailed in Melchior's arms for months after. Junior grieved endlessly. Jimi, Whitney and Eartha were wrecked.

So many losses, and Junior didn't know how many more he could weather. He was already older than all his siblings lived to be. Would this break him?

Death wasn't finished dealing out pain.

Three years later, it struck another staggering blow.

.o

A thunderstorm raged over the castle on a chilly autumn evening. Bone-shaking thunder followed every lightning flicker.

Junior checked in on Wolfgang and Melchior because thunderstorms tended to rattle them. They stayed in what used to be Ludwig's guest room. The soft, dark midnight blues and silvers gave the space a peaceful atmosphere.

Melchior was pale and tired, and he barely ate dinner earlier. He got like that when he missed his brothers, so it didn't strike Junior as unusual. Besides, he bounced back after the sadness passed and resumed eating normally again.

"I miss them, too." Junior wrapped Melchior in a hug and patted the back of his neck.

Melchior rubbed his face on Junior's shoulder. His hair was almost as soft as Wolfgang's. He wiggled out of the embrace after a few seconds to bite his nubby green chew ring. Sometimes he liked hugs, sometimes he didn't.

Lightning illuminated Wolfgang's white hair. He stared out the rectangular window with unfocused pink eyes, his face inscrutable. Fine lines finally began making their appearance around his mouth, the only sign of his growing age.

Junior patted his arm and hugged him, too. "Doing okay?"

Wolfgang grunted, his version of yes.

Junior kissed his cheek. That drew Melchior over to get a kiss, too.

"I know the storm is scary, but it'll be over before midnight."

Wolfgang reached for his tablet and typed the only complete sentence Junior heard from him.

"I will be lightning."

Junior hugged him again, smiling. "You already are. You came into this family like a lightning strike, and we love you for it."

Wolfgang hummed contently and turned to rub Melchior's face. The caress didn't look pleasant, but Melchior leaned into it with his open-mouthed smile.

Junior left them there and headed upstairs. He shut off the lights to watch the clouds flash.

The storm matured as it reached the hilltop. Thunderclaps shook everything.

Melchior screamed six times in rapid succession. Sometimes he melted down during storms, so it didn't raise any alarms. Wolfgang would comfort him like he always did.

Lightning hit the castle at exactly ten o'clock that night, knocking the power out until the alternate circuit tripped to bring everything back on. Junior went to bed after that.

.o

Neither Wolfgang nor Melchior appeared for breakfast the following morning, and they were usually the first ones in the kitchen.

Junior discovered them in bed with their eyes locked. They were dead. Long dead, already in rigor mortis.

Bruises littered Melchior's snout, likely from a self-injurious meltdown. His hands maintained a vice-like grip on Wolfgang's wrist and shoulder, even in death. Wolfgang had one arm around him and cupped his free hand over his cheek, like he hugged him tight to comfort him and help him stop hitting himself.

Melchior's face assumed the same blank, slack-jawed expression Bowser and Aretha did at death. Wolfgang's jaws stayed closed, somehow. His forehead was wrinkled in that determined look he got when nothing would stop him from accomplishing a task.

Junior's eyes shifted above the bed, to the nightlight. The glittery yellow star, which shone without fail for over a century, burnt out. Maybe the power surge from the lightning strike did it.

Autopsies couldn't be performed until the rigor mortis passed. Wolfgang and Melchior held each other for forty-eight hours because nobody wanted to force their dead bodies apart. Junior took them finally going limp as a sign that they reached the Great Beyond.

Melchior had a Crash-related aortic dissection similar to Morton. His aortic intima dissected in his thoracic area instead of his aortic arch. The arterial wall ballooned into an aneurysm and burst open, spilling his blood supply into his chest cavity and abdomen. The excruciating pain of it triggered his final meltdown, and he bled to death in under five minutes.

Coroners couldn't find Wolfgang's cause of death. Medically, he checked out as perfectly healthy. The determined look on his face suggested he willed his heart to stop. He took a page out of Ludwig's book and led Melchior into the Great Beyond.

One thing the coroners could pin down was their time of death: approximately ten hours before Junior found them. He went into their room at eight in the morning.

Lightning hit the castle at exactly ten o'clock that night. Or was it Wolfgang following Melchior into the clouds?

Junior hated that Melchior died in agony, and he hated himself for not checking on him after the screaming stopped. Melchior had to know he was dying.

Being told he would have perished regardless of the heroic measures available didn't offer Junior much comfort, but knowing he kissed and hugged the pair before leaving them to their devices in their room took the edge off.

Wolfgang was a hundred and six years old, and Melchior was fifty-three.

Junior held back tears while he bathed their limp bodies in preparation for the double wake. Bathing Wolfgang was particularly hard, he kept picturing the hulking kid hunched over a toy piano.

"Now you're with your dads again," Junior whispered.

He didn't tell Eartha, Whitney or Jimi about their deaths until he washed their bodies.

All three bawled over their lifeless uncles. They combed their hair, kissed them, hugged them and talked about how wonderful they were. Jimi took Aretha's gold claw polish and painted lightning bolts on Wolfgang's palms. He used the silver to create clouds on Melchior's.

"They went with the storm," Jimi said.

For the wake, Junior positioned Wolfgang and Melchior on their sides, embracing, with their snouts and foreheads touching. They slept that way, so they looked as natural as two dead Koopas could in their wake nest.

Wolfgang's organs were massive. His heart didn't fit in the roasting pot! But Junior made it work, and the combined organs of two Koopas fed the family for two months.

Only after they all ate did Junior tell his family who else came with their uncles.

.o

Informing the Koopa-Mushroom public that their king died wore Junior out because he wasn't a young Koopa anymore, and he remembered what it was like with his dad. He held one press conference, answered the questions and refused to do more. Reporters got his voicemail, never him.

Journalists harassed Jimi, Whitney and Eartha until Junior threatened to burn their headquarters down. After that, they took a few comments and left the royal family alone.

Neither Wolfgang nor Melchior wrote down burial instructions, so Junior threw a lavish royal funeral a month after the wake and interred them together in the same place as Ludwig and Black.

Melchior's favorite stim was stuffing his hands into boxes full of beads. Junior placed two bags of beads on his palms before sealing him in his shell.

He made sure Wolfgang's tablet went into his shell with him, wrapped his red chew tube around his neck and placed his glittery conductor's baton between his enormous hands.

Junior didn't cry properly for them until their shells vanished into the lava and flames. The grief was so overwhelming that he didn't eat or leave his bed for two straight days.

He had the grand piano played by Wolfgang, Ludwig and Bowser sent back to Ludwig's room in the Koopa Royal museum where it belonged, because looking at it destroyed him.

Two weeks after burying people he loved, Junior watched the sunrise from his balcony with a heart full of pain.

Every living tie to his past was dead. The loneliness chewed at his viscera like acid. How did he outlive two people he met as infants? How?

Junior stooped over his green metal cane with its black palm grip, having accepted that he needed it.

Bowser had been dead for sixty-two years— as many years as he lived. Now over a dozen other deaths surrounded him, each one a minefield of trauma and misery. Junior stood alone in grief's wake, unable to see the glorious beauty of a new day.

Jimi, Whitney and Eartha, the next generation, swam forward through the tides of history. They were young, was he going to outlive them, too?

Junior couldn't afford to be distant from them, as much as his mind longed to shut out the world and avoid more pain. Life didn't work that way. Going on was all he knew to do, and he promised that to Cherry.

Those three kids— not really kids, but kids compared to him— needed a guide.

He focused his eyes on the colorful sunrise and swore to give whatever future generations came next the same love his dad showed him.

But first, he healed.

.o

Time, the capricious thing that it was, it flowed onward, blossoming brumous despair into halcyonic hope.

Jimi ascended to the throne as king six months after Wolfgang and Melchior passed. Junior officiated the ceremony in front of the whole Koopa-Mushroom empire. It was an emotional experience, especially when he placed the collar around Jimi's neck. Black leather with gold spikes, similar to his great-great grandpa.

Jimi wore black and gold spiked rings in his purple locs, a fashion trend that caught on among other Koopas with coily hair.

Eartha met and fell for Toadiel, a tall Toad woman who wore a red cap, purple vest and green shoes and made a living as a singer. She had an exquisite mezzo soprano voice. Some swore she could part the sea just by singing to it.

"Gosh, I love being part of this world," Toadiel said when Eartha introduced her to the family.

Eventually, Eartha married Toadiel in a glitzy, but intimate evening ceremony surrounded by flowers and gold fairy lights. Jimi officiated. Whitney was their maid of honor. Junior cried through the vows.

Then Jimi met Bruce, a chubby, blue-eyed Koopa with a brown shell, tan scales and thick chocolate-brown hair growing around his curved horns. He wore it in a mullet. Wendy would have loved to get her hands on that hair and play with it.

Junior liked the guy as soon as Jimi introduced him— sharp wit, gentle nature and quite funny once he got past his shy exterior. He reminded him of Morton in a lot of ways, though he had a soft tenor voice instead of a deep, guttural growl.

What Junior liked most was Bruce never blinked when he found out about Jimi being trans.

"We can have kids!" He said in delight.

Then came the proposal, the huge wedding and an egg. Jimi's hormones didn't affect his fertility at all.

Bruce and Jimi welcomed a daughter, Sinead O'Koopa, who inherited Jimi's green coloring, his purple hair and Bruce's blue eyes. The coily hair trend continued, though Sinead's coils were looser than Jimi's.

Junior cried enormous tears the day Jimi and Bruce placed Sinead in his arms for the first time. There she was, brand new, like Aretha had been. She looked like Bowser— or what he might have looked like if he hatched as a girl with coily purple hair and blue eyes.

He pulled up his dad's old baby pictures to prove it, and it was uncanny.

"Wow!" Jimi showed it to Bruce, "Look at that!"

"Incredible." Bruce's eyes went from Sinead to Junior. "You look like him, too."

Junior smiled at that. "I'm more wrinkled now."

He stroked Sinead's soft hair, fingers trembling. "Sinead, there's a legacy inside you, and I hope I get to tell you about it."

She sneezed as she gripped his claw tip in tiny fingers.

Bruce kissed Jimi and gazed at him with affection shining in his eyes.

Months passed. Sinead didn't walk or crawl much. Most Koopas figured crawling out by four months, and walked by ten months. Her legs frequently curled up on themselves and her tail often did its own thing independent of her legs.

Bruce took her to a doctor, who diagnosed her with cerebral palsy. Spastic triplegia, which meant it affected her legs and tail.

Sinead's egg was accidentally knocked over briefly two months before she hatched. The doctor suspected the yolk blocked her airway just long enough for the lack of oxygen to do damage.

Therapists taught Sinead how to stretch her legs and tail so they wouldn't develop contractures. Her spasticity caused a lot of pain as she grew. She screamed when she tried to walk, so they didn't force her and suggested a power wheelchair. Jimi let her pick the colors she wanted, asked the therapists what they suggested worked best for her, and they watched it being assembled like a Kart.

In the end, it appeared as a front wheel drive power chair with green wheels like her scales, glittery hot pink hubcaps on the drive wheels and casters, a hot pink joystick controller, and purple upholstery matching her hair. The backing had solar charging capabilities to charge the battery nacelle while outdoors and a cord for plugging it in when inside.

Junior thought the wheelchair suited Sinead the way Scott's wheelchair suited him. She loved her pink and purple!

"Look at me, I'm flying!" She spun it around in circles.

Jimi couldn't stop crying on Bruce's shoulder. His baby girl could get around without suffering in pain at every step.

Sinead was a tiny child— the same size as Lemmy at that age— and she wanted to know everything. She had endless questions and she devoured his knowledge like plants absorbing rain. Junior enjoyed answering her nosy inquiries.

.o

Through the years, Koopa Sign and Mushroom Sign evolved to become a single language over time. Koopa-Mushroom Sign, or, more colloquially, KoopMush. Junior kept himself up to date on the changing language. He never knew when he might need it. As it turned out, he made the right choice.

Junior aged into a hunched-over Koopa with snowy white hair. Wrinkles framed his eyes, festooned his snout and marked his neck. Koopas lost teeth in their old, old age. He gave them away as they fell out. Only a single tooth remained in his mouth, the same one he had his whole life. His eyesight deteriorated to the point that he needed glasses to see past his snout. He wore rectangular metal green frames with little orange flames in the top outer corners. They were the tackiest damn things he ever saw in his life, but they looked snazzy perched on his nose.

Elton would've been proud.

A pair of Sledge Siblings became Junior's personal nurses and assistants for things like getting up from chairs, helping him bathe and making sure he took his pain medications on time. Neither was muscular like Jack and Black, but they were just as strong.

They turned out to be Sledgesons, distant cousins on a branch of Jack's and Black's family tree.

Darryl and Hannah made quite a splash— Junior met them when they ground pounded outside and caused the fountain to splatter water on him! He hired them on the spot because they made him laugh.

Darryl kept their blonde hair in a buzz cut and had black inked scarification tattoos of shooting stars along both their arms. They wore hearing aids, like Ludwig, but in gold. Hearing aids gave them awareness of sounds— such as hands clapping or a shout— but they couldn't understand speech. They communicated exclusively in KoopMush Sign and only spoke around people who didn't sign. Their laugh squeaked!

Hannah had a yellow cochlear implant nestled in her long, blonde hair, which she twisted into a bun atop her head. She wouldn't be caught dead without painted claws, always pretty colors with glitter or shimmer.

That morning, Darryl brought Junior breakfast in bed. Scrambled eggs, Bowser bacon, sausages and orange juice, his current favorite.

"Is it a shower day?" Junior signed.

"Yes." Darryl signed back, green eyes twinkling. They used Hannah's sign name, which cupped their hand above their head like her bun. "Will you behave for Hannah in the shower today?"

"Never."

They chuckled together. He ate, washed it down with orange juice and pushed the tray aside.

Hannah came in to assist him into the bathroom.

"Ready for the water, grandpa?"

Everybody called him grandpa. He loved that.

"Yeah. Hit me with it."

She scrubbed him with the Brimstone soap his dad used to like and washed his hair using sweet-smelling Pyroclastic shampoo. He still wore his hair long, but it never grew past his second shell spike.

"What color is that called?" Junior gestured to her claws.

Hannah smiled. "Wendy's Kiss Crimson."

Wendy. His sister.

In the other room, Darryl's squeaky laugh burst through the air. Thanks to the bathroom mirror, Junior put his glasses on and watched them sign excitedly to Whitney as they raved about a new jewelry line coming out.

Both had stars in their eyes, just like Ludwig and Black.

"I love your ink," Whitney signed, indicating Darryl's arms. "Do they mean something?"

"They are all my wishes." Darryl turned their arms over, showing how intricate the tattoo scars were. They used one hand to sign, "I can't say what they are until they come true."

Whitney blinked, covering her mouth with both hands. She laughed, signing Darryl's name by rippling her fingers near her arm, "I just figured out why your sign name looks like it does. It's your tattoos."

Darryl squeak-laughed again, nodding.

They both walked out of sight of the mirror, so Junior lost track of the conversation.

Hannah shut off the water and knelt. Junior winced when she shifted his feet forward to towel them dry.

"I'll be fast," she said.

That day, his legs were not having it. Hannah called Darryl in by flashing the lights, and together they helped him transfer from the shower to his wheelchair. Darryl rushed his pain pills into his hand. He took them with a mug of cactus tea. The mug was glittery gray, and iridescent white writing on the side said I'm too fucking old for this aging shit.

Ludwig gave it to him as a gag gift on his fortieth hatch-day. The bottom had Glitterbomb's rainbow logo.

Junior told him, "I'll start using it after I turn sixty-two."

And then he did.

"Thank you, you're both dears." Junior signed, smiling through the stabbing in his joints.

Darryl and Hannah bowed, and slipped out through the trap door.

"Good morning, grandpa." Whitney kissed his cheek and draped a blanket across his lap. She looked just like Aretha when she smiled, all big teeth and bright eyes.

"Hi, sweetheart," Junior wrapped his arm around her. "Looks like you and Darryl are getting along."

"Do you think they like me?" Whitney raised a brow.

"What's not to like? You're cute, funny, smart, can whip a runway show up in no time flat…"

She ducked her head and played with her tight coily hair. It was clear in her eyes, she fell in love.

"Hey." Junior leaned closer, raising his white eyebrows while looking over the rims of his glasses. "Everybody looks stupid asking somebody out. Just do it. Be yourself. Darryl will love you for it."

Later that afternoon, Junior peeked out the window and saw Whitney catch Darryl by the fountain. Not even glasses gave him the clearest sight, he didn't see exactly what they signed, but after a few minutes Darryl bent over and kissed Whitney mid-sign.

Junior smiled, his russet eyes twinkling.

Time, as merciless as it could be, was also a healer.

.o

Darryl, Hannah, Bruce, Sinead, Jimi, Whitney, Eartha and Toadiel loved listening to Junior tell stories about his younger years. Through his tales, all the people he lost found life again.

"You lived in a volcano?" Sinead's eyes widened.

Junior laughed, signing while he spoke. "Yup! It's a museum now."

Toadiel cocked her head, brows raising inquisitively. "So I'm not the first Toad to love a Koopa?"

He grinned, flashing his one tooth. "Cherry was human, like Mario and Peach, but…sorry. My wife beat you to the punch. We were married for eighty-three years when she died."

"That's a lot! That's…that's so many the Earth exploded!" Sinead exclaimed.

Junior guffawed, waving his hands. "But we're on it, what happens to us?"

She thought about it, pursing her mouth. "I guess we go boom. Oops."

The gathering exploded in mirth. Their laughter was beautiful music to him.

Darryl pulled Whitney aside out of the blue. They signed, "Do you remember what my tattoos mean?"

"Yes. Your wishes." Whitney wiggled her fist up and down.

Darryl took a deep breath and knelt, signing upward, "I made another one, and only you can make it come true. Will you marry me, Whitney?"

They used Whitney's sign name, a two-fingered gesture by their mouth to indicate her sharp teeth.

Whitney clasped Darryl's hands and knelt to be eye level with them. She nodded, tears welling in her eyes. They kissed tenderly.

Junior caught the whole thing on video. That was a precious memory.

Two days later, Junior visited Celine's floor to see Chester, his sixth cardiologist. He kept outliving them! Neil, Billie, LeAnn, Warren, Jaci, and now Chester, a yellow-shelled Koopa Troopa who wore round orange framed glasses and had a prosthetic left leg. Junior never would've noticed it was a prosthetic if he hadn't seen Chester take it off once.

The fantastic turtle standing before him was Judy's great-great-great grandson, and he inherited her nose.

Chester kept a collection of tiny battery-operated lamps all over his desk because Junior kept giving them to him as gag gifts. There were Koopa shells, flowers, a beer can, a boot and an eyeball.

For that visit, he handed him one shaped like a small Spiny shell.

"Eh, what's one more light?" Chester smiled, placing it among the rest. "You're looking short of breath, old man."

Junior leaned heavily on his green quad cane, flanked by Darryl and Hannah. He shot him a fake scowl from beneath his frosty white eyebrows. "I'm so old my back goes out more than I do, and some of my farts are wetter than my mouth."

They scoffed, Chester beckoned him towards the exam room and they set up. Darryl and Hannah helped him remove his shell so he could recline on the table. This position wasn't comfortable for him anymore, so they rested pillows under his knees to make it bearable.

Chester laid the transducer pad on Junior's chest, and a three-dimensional projection of his heart appeared above it like a ghostly specter. He moved his hands through it to twist the image into whichever angles he needed, and a pinching motion opened it up to see what happened inside.

For the first time in his life since childhood, Junior's echocardiogram came back abnormal. Dilated cardiomyopathy, likely there for the past four years. He knew it meant a countdown.

"I'm dying," Junior pronounced the words slowly.

Chester bowed his head, nodding.

"Any idea how long I've got?"

"It's hard to say. You're healthy in every other way, and still fairly strong."

"Okay, give me your best ballpark estimate."

"A year, maybe two." Chester adjusted his glasses. "But it can easily be tomorrow, if a heart attack finally hits."

Ice pulsed down Junior's spine, an instinctive ripple of fear. Peace replaced it in the span of a breath. He spent years being the one watching people he loved find out they were dying, so it felt eerie to be in the crosshairs.

Maybe seeing his whole family die a variety of deaths before him added to the sense of calm. Death wasn't entirely unfamiliar to him.

"I went through this with my dad. I think I know what's coming." Junior said later, as he signed the DNR papers and handed Chester the pen.

Chester shed a tear. "Your heart isn't battle scarred like your dad's was. Chances are, it'll be quick and peaceful for you when it's time. Are you okay? Do you have any other questions?"

Junior smiled wryly at that. "No. But, Chester, someday you'll be an old man. Maybe you'll live through seeing a lot of people you love die in many different ways. It changes how you look at life. Cherish yours while you're living it, and cherish the people you love while they're here."

Sniffling, Chester picked up a tissue. He lifted his glasses to dry his eyes and wipe his nose. "I'll take that advice to heart, sire."

Junior patted his shoulder and hobbled out, his quad cane thumping on the floor.

Darryl and Hannah got the news with him— Hannah signed everything for Darryl— so he didn't have to repeat it to them.

Unlike Bowser, he avoided the mistake of waiting to speak up.

Once Darryl and Hannah situated Junior in his room again, he gathered Bruce, Jimi, Sinead, Whitney, Eartha and Toadiel to let them know his condition was terminal. He spoke at length, explaining Crash, heart failure and his approaching death.

"…and it's all right. I know you'll all be okay."

Jimi teared up and crushed Junior in a tight embrace. "I love you, grandpa."

Junior kissed his cheek and stroked his purple locs. "I love you, too. I always will."

Whitney approached next, her dark eyes wide in fright. Rather than speak, she burst into tears. Junior hugged her to his chest and rubbed the back of her neck.

"It'll be fine, sweetheart."

"I'm going to miss you," she sniffled, "I will always love you, grandpa."

He chuckled at that. "Sweetie, I'll always love you, too."

Toadiel and Whitney hugged each other after she stepped away. Whitney turned to Darryl and they hugged, while Eartha leaned on Toadiel. Hannah laid a comforting hand on Bruce's shoulder.

Junior turned to Sinead, who grasped the hot pink joystick on her wheelchair and came closer. Gods, she looked so much like Bowser, it was remarkable how those genes popped up in her. If her hair and eyes had been red and her scales a lighter shade of green…

"When you go to the Great Beyond, grandpa, will you run across the sun?"

"W-what?" Junior laughed at the unexpected question.

"Will you? You'll tell me you made it if you do."

Only a four-year-old could logic it out like that.

He winked at her. "You know what? It's a deal. I'll run across the sun for you, Sinead. I'll be really silly about it."

Satisfied, she headed towards Bruce, who frowned in deep thought, and took hold of his hand. "It's okay, daddy B! He's not sad, why is everybody sad?"

"Oh, honey," Bruce tried to smile for her, and it came out as a grimace instead.

"You've been with us forever," Eartha said, kneeling to look up at Junior. "It feels like you're supposed to always be here. Like the mountains, or the ocean."

Junior nodded knowingly, remembering when he thought the same about people. "I won't go away completely. I'll be right here when you remember me, and I'll be in the stories you tell. Stories are how we live forever, Eartha."

She surged forward and embraced him, laying her cheek on his shoulder.

"I love you," he whispered in her ear. "It'll be okay, sweetheart. I promise."

"Grandpa, I love you, too. I know it'll be fine, you make everything fine."

Junior gestured for Bruce, Sinead, Whitney and Toadiel to come over, and held them all along with Eartha. His precious family, a blooming future.

.o

The Koopa Royal museum unleashed a grief wave Junior didn't expect. He held it in as he showed his family where he grew up, told stories only he knew, and passed on everything he experienced to two generations.

All around him, ancient stone walls bled the past. It was heavy on his heart, being the only living person who remembered how to hear those echoes.

Rather than put in replica furniture, projectors created holograms of what used to be in each room.

"Grandpa, why are you crying?" Sinead asked.

They were in Bowser's old bedroom, her wheelchair partly blocking the hologram of his bed. She sat on the exact spot he died.

"I saw a lot of hard things happen here," he said. "I miss my daddy."

She rolled her chair alongside his and grasped his little finger. "Will I miss you like you miss him?"

"Maybe." He wiped away his tears. "It's okay to feel any feelings after I die. If you feel happy because I don't hurt anymore, that's okay. If you cry, that's okay, too. You'll probably feel a mix of things at the same time. Grief is a complicated emotion."

Sinead's eyebrows furrowed. She looked up at him with all the seriousness of youth, and whispered, "Am I gonna see you die, grandpa?"

"You might." Junior murmured through his tears. Kids! They were so innocent! "But it's also okay if you don't stay because you think it's scary to watch."

"Nah! Nothing scares me! I'll hug you so you know we love you while you leave."

She smiled, spun her chair and zoomed out the door.

"Hey, the piano in here is real!" Bruce shouted from Ludwig's room.

Sinead followed his voice, and Junior trailed her at a slower pace since his chair was manual.

The group gathered at the door while Bruce played the first movement of Ludwig's Interstellar. He was amazing at it, his fingers rolling along keys that hadn't made a sound in ages.

Junior would've lit someone else on fire with his breath for touching such a sacred piece of history. But Bruce's talented fingers didn't taint it, he resurrected it.

That piano shouldn't have been in tune at all, and yet…

Bowser and Ludwig had perfect pitch. Maybe their spirits maintained the strings.

Bruce segued into the final movement of Wolfgang's The Fountain with effortless flourish. Through the music, Junior saw Bowser, Ludwig and Wolfgang's hands flutter over the keys. Their lives flashed before his eyes, vivid and real.

Someday, they were all going to be together again in the stars. He listened to the piece while enveloped by that hope.

And Bruce cemented himself as part of the Koopa-Toadstool family through his musical prowess, so his fingerprints deserved to join the palimpsest of memories lying unseen on every key.

When he finished, he smiled sheepishly at everyone's shocked expressions. "I, uh, I went to the KMU."

"Damn," Eartha whistled, "I can tell."

They went downstairs to the living room. Holograms projected brief, dreamlike moments of hatch-day parties, Bowser walking through and Junior's siblings sprawled on the couch.

Junior gazed at the dark gray rectangle of the dining room door. He could almost hear the cacophony his old family made each morning. Iggy's woodpecker-like giggle, Ludwig percolating coffee, Wendy protesting someone touching her plate, Lemmy shrieking, Larry telling them to knock it off, Roy clanking plates, Morton belching and Bowser's booming mirth.

He smiled over the lump in his throat. So much happened here.

Before they left, Junior wiped away tears and touched the wall outside the main entrance.

"I'll see you all soon," he whispered.

.o

That summer, Whitney married Darryl in a quiet garden wedding by the fountain. Both wore flowers— Darryl had a crown of white hibiscus and Whitney wove white baby's breath among her coily curls. Darryl didn't wear any makeup, but Whitney glammed herself up with gold glitter eyeshadow and shimmery purple lip gloss. The fountain sparkled behind them as they signed their vows.

After the nuptial kiss and simultaneous leap over the fire pit, Darryl held Whitney in their tattooed arms and spoke aloud, "My wishes were you."

Their words were difficult to understand, so they said it again, slower.

Whitney burst into tears and held them close.

"I love you," she signed, "I'm honored to be your wish."

Junior glimpsed the marriage license and grinned. It was nice to see the Koopason name again.

.o

It took two more years for the heart failure to affect Junior's day-to-day life. Chester prescribed oxygen via nasal cannulae, which he wore religiously to help his fatigue. Technology advanced so far that the concentrator was a tiny three inch cube dangling against his chest like a pendant, and it barely made any noise. No worrying about wrangling six feet of tubing.

The swelling in his extremities became excruciating, so his mornings began with pain meds, diuretics and a shower before Darryl and Hannah helped him wriggle into compression stockings.

He dozed off in his wheelchair a lot more often. Bruce took so many pictures of him sleeping in awkward places, they became a running gag.

There were a few scary nights where the shortness of breath kept him awake. He started removing his shell and sleeping on his back just to get proper rest.

One night, Junior awoke— or at least thought he did— to Bowser sitting on the edge of his bed. Just how he used to during his childhood. His hair was mostly gray, like it looked when he died.

"Hey, kiddo!" Bowser grinned, all crinkly eyes and sharp teeth.

"Dad?" Junior squinted. He wasn't wearing his glasses. His dad should have been a colorful blur lacking in detail, yet he showed up as clear as ever.

"Look at you. You got old! Wow." Bowser ruffled Junior's white hair and patted his wrinkled cheek.

Junior licked his chops and swallowed. "I lived a long life for you and Cherry."

Tears welled in Bowser's eyes. He stroked his forehead and kissed the tip of his nose. "You went through hell watching them all die, too."

"That was hard…but I made it through." Junior blinked, "Can I go with you?"

"Not yet. We're still getting your spot ready."

"Aw, dad…"

"Nope." Bowser grinned playfully. "You'll know when it's time. Cherry's been itching to hug and kiss you again."

Junior's throat ached at her name. He nodded because he longed to wrap his arms around her, too.

"I guess you met Aretha and Wolfgang."

"Oh, yeah! Great pair, those two. And that twat, Joanne and that dickhead, Andrew? Wolfgang lit 'em on fire as soon as he saw 'em. They're still burning. BWAHAHAHA!"

That laugh. That big, booming laugh. Junior sniffled and extended his arms. Bowser ducked into them and they embraced tightly. His dad still smelled the same, like brimstone.

"I love you, dad. I miss you."

"Ah, Junior." Bowser squeezed him tight and rumbled in his ear. "I love you, too. Always, Junior. You made me proud."

His love hit Junior like a blue shell on a Kart track.

"Listen, I know what you need. Lay back. There. Relax. I'll take care of you. Everything is gonna be okay, Junior. I promise."

Bowser settled on the edge of the bed again and pulled a book out of seemingly nowhere. Peter Piranha's Bad Day.

"Aren't I too old for that?"

"Nah! You're never too old to need your daddy." Bowser was right and he knew it.

Junior drifted back to sleep to the sound of his dad's comforting bass voice making silly noises at him. The last thing he felt before he dropped off was a hand stroking his hair and a soft kiss on his cheek.

He woke up alone, and wept as a grief wave submerged him. After he finished crying, he put his glasses on, took out his phone and studied the holographically projected calendar. His sorrow melted into peaceful acceptance.

Deep in his heart, he knew exactly when he would die. Date and time. It was four days away.

The dream he had the following night only cemented this.

He laid across the couch in the living room of his childhood home. The walls were polychromatic crystal, and he heard his family talking and laughing in the brilliant light coming through the dining room door.

Junior startled awake the next morning and asked Eartha to take him into Valley City. He lived long enough to see it built after all, and wanted to look at it.

.o

Towering skyscrapers glowed in the late morning light. Traffic zoomed and people bustled. Cherry trees from the forest above the valley lined the sidewalks, their pink blossoms raining petals like snow.

Junior visited all the streets named after people he loved. Eartha pushed him along in his wheelchair while he sat hunched over, squinting through his glasses and adjusting his nasal cannula.

The sun climbed higher. Due to being in a valley that was partly a canyon, it took a while for its light to fully shine on the city streets.

They stopped at the intersection of Ludwig Avenue and Black Street, and Junior looked up at the beautiful Koopason Music University, or KMU, a blue, black, green and silver building in the shape of a stylized flame.

Across the street from it, the Koopason Medical Center, a silver-windowed hospital with a glorious waterfall fountain outside its main entrance.

Next door to the music school, the Koopason Deaf University, though everybody called it KDU. Its campus was a sprawling complex of cherry trees, gardens and dorms. The central building where classes happened had a large bronze plaque explaining who Ludwig and Black were, and what they did.

Wendy Way included the Wendy O'Koopa School of Beauty, where budding makeup artists and fashion designers went to learn their craft. All the windows on that building were pink outlined in gold.

Intersecting with Wendy Way was Jack Avenue. The Sledgeson Blind School, SBS, lived there, a towering building surrounded by palm trees, vines and brick-lined walkways. The street lights on this intersection chirped to help blind pedestrians cross.

Lemmy Lane had an amusement park named Lemmy's Ballpit, like his old website. The tallest roller coaster in it was Lemmy's Loop, an orange five hundred foot tall monstrosity that took people straight up, dropped them into a descending spiral and put them through a vertical loop before ending in a final corkscrew twist.

Junior rode that thing a thousand times when it first opened, back when the city was dirt roads and construction pits. The central pole cars dropped from had a little gold statue of Lemmy balancing atop his ball. Lately, riders had an internet challenge going around to take a clear photo of it as the car dropped.

Scott's Stop, a shopping complex next door to Lemmy's Ballpit, sold and repaired musical instruments.

Iggy Street was full of technological storefronts, including Iggster's, a computer repair shop. Anybody who wanted to build computers, hack systems, or buy their tech-ignorant grandparents something user-friendly came here to get it.

Roy Road had arts and crafts shops, exotic cuisine restaurants and sunglasses. Pom-Pom Avenue provided martial arts schools, dance classes and yoga.

Morton Street had Morton's Moment, a hotel and casino based around Serrated. Sienna Street intersected it, and there people could find drum kits, take drum lessons and learn how to manage a stage.

Larry Avenue offered Larry's Cardiac Hospital, a teaching hospital where people went to learn about Koopa heart problems. Crash remained part of the curriculum. A small fountain outside housed a stone statue of Larry holding an anatomical Koopa heart. The plaque underneath explained who he was and that he found the cure for Crash.

Smaller side streets leading into the suburbs included Wolfgang Way, Aretha Avenue, Balthazar Road, Melchior Lane, and Gaspar Street.

Mario's Mall was a mall for plumbers, of all people. Peaches, the pastry next door, sold peach pies.

Cherry Road lead south out of the city, and Junior Road went north out of the city.

They intersected on Bowser Boulevard.

Eartha walked Junior down Bowser Boulevard, the city's main thoroughfare. He watched Toads, Kongs and Koopa Troopas mingle with no sign of unrest, and he smiled.

In a park, he watched a Kong kneel and propose to a Koopa Troopa. It was a magnificent moment of sonder, to see people in short snapshots and know they lived rich, complex lives with long stories to tell.

Everywhere his eyes landed, he saw life carrying on in a space that used to be an empty valley.

Where did all that time go?

Eartha took him to Junior's Joint— a fast-food place named after him— and they shared a lemonade smoothie. Nobody recognized him because he was so damn old. He laughed pretty hard at that.

After the smoothies, he slumped forward in the chair and focused on breathing. He didn't want this day to end, but his body had other plans.

"Grandpa, are you okay?" Eartha placed her hand on Junior's shoulder.

Junior shook his head and panted, unable to catch his breath.

"Home," he murmured.

She stroked his white topknot ponytail. "I'll warp us there, okay?"

He looked up at Eartha and nodded. "Thank you for this. You're a good kid."

Forty-nine years old wasn't a kid, but she seemed like one compared to him.

She kissed his cheek and attached the warp receiver to his chair.

That night, a chunky cough and dull, throbbing pain in his joints kept him awake. No position offered comfort. This was the start of the dying process he saw his dad go through for months, and he would cross it in days.

Junior put his glasses on and clapped his hands to activate his phone. "Call Hannah."

Her phone included a bright, blinking light. She always said to use it to wake her if he needed her at night, and for the first time he did.

Hannah came to his bedside within moments, sans her cochlear implant earpiece. She signed, "What is it?"

"Pain," Junior gestured at his whole body, his forehead wrinkling. "I can't breathe. It hurts. Help."

She held his hand and texted Chester. It took him fifteen minutes to arrive. He bustled in, listened to Junior's chest, propped him up on pillows and eased the compression stockings onto his swollen legs.

"This is it," Junior whispered.

"Yes." Chester's eyes welled over. "Your lungs are filling with fluid, that's why it's hard to breathe. I'm ordering morphine. It'll help with the air hunger and the pain."

"My dad got that at the end, too. It helped him."

Chester patted his hand and made the call. The morphine and IV pole arrived in a locked box. He had to assemble it all, which he did with military precision.

Junior endured the stinging needle stick in his tail without complaint. Chester taped it down and wrapped a clear dressing once around his tail to prevent accidental disconnects. He pushed an initial morphine dose via syringe to start some pain relief right away.

Chester hung up the IV bag and tapped an orb on the pole to bring up the holographic control display. His fingers danced across the ghostly gold buttons. The pump started in a juddering whir.

Finally, Chester slipped a small plastic white ring onto Junior's left thumb. On it, a cylindrical single red button control.

"This connects wirelessly to the pump," Chester said, pointing. "You or somebody with you can push this button to get a bolus dose of morphine. You can only push it three times in fifteen minutes, so call me if you need more and I'll up the base dosage. Can you push the button okay, or should I move it?"

Junior shifted it onto his middle finger, where he wore his wedding band, and touched the button with his thumb without pushing it. "I've got it."

He felt better already. Looking up at Hannah, he signed, "Vent bag, please?"

She blinked, nodded, and attached one. He wasn't going to force himself onto a commode just to pee or poop, and the last thing he wanted to do was soil himself.

She found one that matched his scales.

In the morning, the morphine had him so sleepy that he couldn't get his spoon to his mouth. Darryl fed him his breakfast. Hot cinnamon oatmeal, scrambled eggs and orange juice. He slept most of that day.

Darryl, Hannah, Toadiel, Bruce, Eartha, Whitney, Jimi and Sinead camped out in Junior's room so he wouldn't be alone. They set up foam mattresses on either side of the bed.

Junior didn't want lunch or dinner, but he sipped lemonade from a straw when Sinead offered it.

"Do you want a Birdo leg? Or ten?" Sinead asked teasingly.

"Nope." Junior smiled with his eyes closed.

"What about peanut butter and pickles?"

"Eew!" He stuck his tongue out.

"Whaaat about…ooh! Ice cream on corn?"

"Sinead, you are sadistic."

"What's splackdiskic mean?"

Junior opened his eyes to regard her. "It means you like causing misery."

Whitney looked up from her journaling. "Sinead, don't bother grandpa, he's resting."

"She isn't."

Everyone quieted down anyway. Junior slept. Sometimes he couldn't tell if the susurrus around him came from this world or the next.

That evening, he ate a bite of Cheep-Cheep kabob. His last taste of food. He vomited it back up later.

Chest pains had him pushing the pain control button in his hand several times. Chester came up to increase his baseline morphine dosage. He checked his blood pressure and pulled everybody aside.

"He's beginning the active dying phase. It won't be long."

Junior snorted. "Chester, you can say it out loud. I know I'm dying."

"I'm trying to be kind about it."

"You're kind enough, now relax. It'll be okay. I'm ready."

Chester bent over the bed and squeezed Junior's shoulder. Tears fogged up his orange glasses.

"I hope the end is easy for you, sire. It's been an honor."

"The honor's mine." Junior clasped his hand. "Thank you, Chester."

Jimi sat on the spot Chester vacated. He slumped against Junior's chest, sobbing. Junior embraced him and kissed the top of his head.

"Oh, Jimi," He stroked his great-great-grand-nephew's locs, his fingertips touching the artificial horns he had put in ages ago. They felt real. "Keep being an incredible king."

Whitney joined Jimi. Junior played with a strand of her coily hair. "You're beautiful, Whitney. Don't ever doubt that."

She sniffled and nuzzled their cheeks together. "I hope it doesn't hurt, grandpa."

"Nothing hurts, sweetheart."

Jimi moved aside to make room for Eartha.

"Why aren't you scared, grandpa?"

He smiled sleepily, "I know where I'm going."

Bruce walked out of the room to collect himself. He hated people seeing him cry. Ludwig was like that, too.

Toadiel sat by Junior's feet, her eyes shiny with tears. "Do you need anything?"

He shook his head and blew her a kiss. "I have everything right here."

Sinead held onto Junior's hand while he faded into sleep. He slept the rest of that afternoon, into the night and didn't stir again until dawn the next morning. In the interim, he felt somebody change his vent bag, but he never noticed using it.

Bruce was awake, watching him. So they were on a death watch. Junior almost laughed.

He slid his glasses on. "Hey, Bruce?"

"Hm?"

Junior made the audacious move of pushing his blankets off and sitting up. Morphine kept all his pains to annoying twinges. He felt obscenely naked without his shell, though that couldn't be helped anymore.

His clawed feet touched down on the floor. He stood on shaky legs, one hand gripping the IV pole like a walking stick.

"Help me go outside. Hurry, before the sun comes up."

Bruce didn't get much choice. Junior started for the balcony door. One swollen footstep at a time. Bruce rushed over to steady him when he stumbled and helped him sit in the stone chair.

Those were the last steps he would take in his life. He remembered Bowser's letter mentioning that. Nobody thought of lasts, so he did.

"Sit," Junior gestured to the other chair, where Cherry sat so long ago.

Bruce eased himself down, eyes wide and worried.

"You married into one hell of a legacy, Bruce."

"Mmhmm. I feel like an outsider, dancing in the dark."

Junior grinned, flashing his one tooth. "You're not. You're a Koopa-Toadstool too, you added to this family. You're a damn good turtle."

"Sire, I—"

"That's 'grandpa' to you, you goof." Junior's grin became a soft smile. "Take care of them for me."

Bruce's eyes teared up. He nodded, wiping his fingers through his brown hair. "I swear it on my life, grandpa."

"Awesome. Now bring me Sinead, please? I need to talk to her. It's important."

Bruce nodded and went inside.

A chest pain almost bowled Junior over. He pressed the bolus button while nobody watched.

The first rays of sunrise broke over the horizon as Bruce brought sleepy, bed-headed Sinead outside and sat her across Junior's lap. Her feet twisted inward, toes curling down almost onto the soles of her feet. He hugged her to his chest.

"Hey, sleepy."

"Hi, grandpa." She yawned. "What's happening?"

"I'm preparing to die, sweetheart. It's going to be soon."

She looked at him, eyes welling up. Her voice, so innocent, was like a bell. "Does it hurt, grandpa?"

Suddenly, Junior understood why Bowser smiled while sitting in his Kart during his first heart attack. He smiled for Sinead even though his chest felt on the verge of caving in.

"No. It doesn't hurt."

"What's dying like?"

"You know how you fall asleep in your chair, and then you wake up in your bed because daddy Bruce or daddy Jimi carried you to bed?"

"Uh-huh! I do that a lot! So do you!" She giggled.

He nuzzled his cheek against hers. "Dying is like that, too. Your whole body stops working, and the light that makes you who you are is carried off to the Great Beyond to wake up feeling better again."

"Really? Will you be with your daddy again?"

"Yup, I will! And you know how people sometimes twitch and wiggle as they go to sleep? Sometimes bodies do weird things as they stop working." Junior hugged her close, feeling her tiny heartbeat against his. "It might look or sound scary, but I promise you that I won't know it's happening. I won't be scared or in pain. Okay?"

The gnawing ache in his chest cooled away under the morphine haze.

Sinead pushed his glasses up onto his snout when they slipped too low. She kissed his nose and pet his cheeks with her tiny hands.

"Okay. I'll take care of you, grandpa, and I'll be brave."

Such an innocent child. Junior smiled at the nascent future sparkling in her eyes like the brewing morning.

Alpenglow colored the mountaintops. Golden rays lit the ultramarine sky in arrays of pink, red and gold. The sunrise reflected itself in Junior's glasses lenses and russet eyes.

It was hard to breathe. So hard. But he watched the sun ascend because he would not be here to see it descend. He inhaled the sweetness of the dew-covered roses, listened to the melodic birds, welcomed the cool breeze on his face and cherished Sinead's presence in his lap.

Alive. Such a joyful, yet sad word. He was alive, and it would soon be over. Still, creation sang all around him. Throughout his life, for a moment in time compared to the universe— not just any moment, this moment— he got to play his note in its eternal song. It went on long before he came here and would go on long after he was gone.

But oh, what a glorious, transcendent, superlative song he got to be part of!

Junior blinked, breathing through another pang. Death was only a terrifying foe to those caught in its grip too soon, or before they were prepared. The suffering afterward stayed with the living. Pom-Pom's wisdom rang true.

Bowser was ready to die when he did, his mistake lay in not preparing everyone else. Junior tried not to repeat that. He hoped the grandkids were as aware as possible, so they could be present with him in love instead of shock and dread.

Junior lifted his head, eyes drooping tiredly. "Do you see how huge the horizon is, Sinead?"

She turned to look. "Uh-huh, it goes on forever!"

"We're like that on the inside, too."

"We are?"

"Mmhmm." Junior stopped to catch his breath. "We carry a light, and it goes on— it keeps going, even after we die. That's what infinity is, kiddo. It's— it lasts forever. It's love. We're made of love, Sinead. We exist to share it in this short time we call life, and the universe exists for us to look at it while we're here loving each other. Love everybody while they're here, because you never know when they'll be gone. Remember that as long as you live. It's important to remember. Love people. Just love them. If you give nothing else in life, give love."

Sinead hugged him, sniffling. "I promise."

Junior blinked back tears. "Love is a promise, you know."

"Then I promise because I love you."

"Oh, Sinead," He kissed her cheek, "I love you, too. Like a blue shell on a Kart track."

She giggled, "You're silly, grandpa!"

Junior held her close, trying to shield her from seeing the strain on his face. He panted as if he ran. Where did all the air keep going?

The soporific pull of the morphine dragged him towards sleep, a slumber he wouldn't wake from.

He kept his eyes open until the sun fully revealed itself above the eastern horizon. Then he mentally let go of his life, closed his eyes and sank into dreamless peace. There was nothing to fear.

"Grandpa, are you sleeping?" Sinead patted his cheek. When he didn't respond, she nuzzled her nose against his neck and stroked his long, white hair. "Okay, grandpa, sleep tight."

Bruce poked his head outside to find Sinead watching over Junior while he gasped for air. He scooped her up and called Darryl and Hannah for help, and they carried Junior back to his bed.

Sinead wouldn't let him take Junior's glasses off. She pointed emphatically at his face. "He'll want to see us if he wakes up again!"

Bruce left the glasses on.

Junior's family spent the next several hours tending to him. They brushed his hair, swabbed his mouth with lemon-flavored swabs, changed his vent bag, pushed the bolus button if his face twisted in pain and took turns holding him in their arms. He was never alone.

Sinead napped in the crook of his arm the way Lemmy slept on Bowser. Jimi snapped a photo with his phone, freezing that precious latibule in time.

Nobody looked at Junior with fear or dread in their eyes. There was only love and the grief of goodbye.

By nine o'clock, Junior's mouth hung open and his breathing sounded like drowning. He did not respond to outside stimuli.

Sunlight swept through the room and descended along the walls until it disappeared.

Junior's snout turned blue at eleven o'clock in the morning. By eleven-thirty, his face was gray.

Chester came in to hang a fresh morphine bag and check his blood pressure. It wouldn't read.

"He's leaving us," he signed as he spoke, "Get ready."

Jimi sobbed out loud. He cradled Junior against his chest while Eartha and Whitney held his hands. Sinead scooted herself to sit across his lap. Bruce and Toadiel rested their palms on his knees. Darryl and Hannah cupped his shoulders.

Sinead whispered to him, "Grandpa, don't forget to run across the sun."

Junior's breath caught in a faint laugh. He squeezed Eartha's hand, thinking it was Sinead's.

"He has my hand." Eartha teared up. She stroked his cheek, sniffling, "I'm okay. We're okay. Let go, grandpa. Everybody here loves you so much."

Jimi rubbed Junior's arm. There was nothing more to say that hadn't been said.

Just before noon, Junior opened his eyes and looked around at everyone. His gaze shot to the foot of the bed. He smiled tearfully, as if beholding something beautiful beyond imagining.

"I'll be right there, Cherry. I love you, too."

Junior looked straight into Sinead's eyes and expressed to her all the love he knew in his lifetime. She wouldn't see the memories, but she already knew about them. The future reflected back at him, her nascence brighter than a million sunrises. Hope, endless, boundless hope, poured over him. Euphoria tingled across his spine. His extremities went numb. Tears welled in his eyes as his vision dimmed around the edges.

He loved them, and they loved him. They were together. Nothing else mattered. In his final moment of awareness, nothing else mattered.

Junior grinned, expression softening.

"It's beautiful," he said, tears trickling onto his cheeks, "It's so beautiful."

Then consciousness fled him, and his head slumped back against Jimi's shoulder.

"Grandpa!" Jimi pulled him harder against his chest and sobbed openly, face contorting. "Shhh, don't fight it. It's okay."

Toadiel's eyes welled up. Bruce gave her back a reassuring pat.

A horrid gurgle issued from Junior's throat. His eyes rolled back until the whites showed between his eyelids. He looked like a fish out of water. Sinead remembered what he said about his body doing weird things as it stopped working, so she wasn't frightened, not even when his tongue turned purple. She slipped her arms around his neck and hugged him.

"I love you, grandpa, sleep tight."

Jimi sniffled. Whitney sobbed. Eartha pressed Junior's knuckles against her cheek. Everybody was so busy crying that only Sinead noticed how his muscles tensed and relaxed like a garment being cast off. His mouth stayed open, his empty eyes staring into space.

A few moments went by before Bruce murmured, "Did he go?"

Chester leaned between everyone to lay his stethoscope on Junior's chest. Sinead scooted aside to make room. The gathering pulled their crying back and watched him with large, worried eyes.

He moved the stethoscope up, down and to each side. After a moment, he withdrew, head bowed, and pronounced what they all dreaded.

"He's gone."

Everyone cried at the same time. Even Bruce, who normally walked away to break down.

Tears welled in Sinead's eyes as she took Junior's glasses off, folded the arms and set them aside.

Into his ear, she whispered, "Bye, grandpa. I hope it's really pretty where you are."

.o

Junior vaguely heard the future generation wailing, but it faded into the voices he knew from the past. He sat up on the couch of his glowing childhood home and approached the lambent white brilliance cast by the dining room door.

Cherry poked her head out, grinning, her dark hair gleaming. "It's about time. You! Handsome guy! Come on!"

"Junior!" Bowser hollered, "Your spot's ready, c'mon, kiddo!"

Junior's hair went from white to reddish-orange when he kissed Cherry and hugged her to his chest. Everyone cheered and hollered when he walked in with her. Luminescence overtook everything, he barely made out the faces of his family gathered at the polychromatic table.

Peach sat beaming between Bowser and Mario, holding both their hands while they smiled at her. Luigi kissed Daisy's cheek. Daisy played with his mustache. Ludwig and Black signed animatedly to each other. Wolfgang and Melchior hooked their pinkie fingers together and rocked in unison. Scott spun his wheelchair as he playfully bonked heads with Lemmy. Aretha wrapped her arms around Gaspar and Balthazar. Pom-Pom and Roy gazed lovingly at one another. Wendy pushed Jack's red-rimmed glasses up on his nose. Morton and Sienna kissed softly. Boom-Boom and Lakitu chatted as they walked in with trays of steaming, delicious food. Iggy and Larry pulled out a chair for Junior.

They were together again, but when did they part ways? Hadn't he always been here?

Light superseded everything when Junior sat at the table beside Cherry, and from that moment on he never felt pain or sorrow again.

.o

Junior died at noon on the same date as Bowser. His death marked the end of an era.

He was a hundred and sixty-two years old— the oldest Koopa in recorded history— even beating out Kamek, who lived to a hundred and fifty-five.

Junior's family tended to his body as a final act of love for him. When they removed his organs for the wake meal, his heart was completely unmarred.

His funeral brought four kingdoms together and ended in a party more massive than his wedding to Cherry. Ludwig's and Wolfgang's music sent him off to his rest via Toadiel's beautiful singing.

They buried Junior on the hill next to Bowser, Peach, Mario, Luigi, Daisy and Cherry. Their gilded grave statues formed an incomplete circle overlooking all directions. His statue would complete the gap.

There was a total solar eclipse on the day of his funeral. His family forgot all about it because of the circumstances, so nobody thought much about the darkening sky at his burial until it turned eerily black.

Everybody looked up as the brilliant diamond ring effect gave way to the diaphanous white solar corona spreading out against the darkness.

"It's grandpa!" Sinead shouted, pointing excitedly, "He's running across the sun! He's there! He's in the Great Beyond! Hi! Grandpa! Hi! I see you! Hi! Grandpa! We're all here! Hi! We love you!"

She wondered why most of the adults broke out crying. Wasn't this supposed to be happy? Junior made it home!

The pretty white corona faded as slivers of sunlight burst through, and she had to look away. Only then did the tears come.

Grandpa Junior was gone.

.o

A year later, at the Mushroom Carnival, Sinead crashed her wheelchair into the spiked shell of a dark red Koopa kid while watching the Gravitron spin.

"Watch where you're going!" The kid spun to scowl at her, charcoal eyes hard and black Mohawk bristling.

"Excuse you," Sinead raised a brow. "What's your name?"

"Luciano," he said, arms crossed. "You?"

"Princess Sinead O'Koopa. I have the right of way."

"Tch!" Luciano rolled his eyes and stepped in her path with a grin that only flashed two front teeth. "What's with the wheelchair?"

"I hatched with funny legs." Sinead shrugged, unruffled. "Wanna get cotton candy?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Ten years later, when they were a pair of shy seventeen year olds, they kissed for the first time on that exact spot.

And ten years after that, everyone stood together in the castle's great hall to watch their wedding. It was a sight— Luciano grew up to be huge, and Sinead remained tiny.

They tried for children on their wedding night.

Sinead became egg-bound due to her cerebral palsy and small size, and doctors had to assist her through laying it. She didn't regret bringing a child into the world. Luciano held her hand the whole time, making sure she stayed as comfortable as possible.

Luciano called everybody into the room when the egg hatched. The baby nosed out of the eggshell sporting very curly white hair, a spiked purple shell, black eyes and light green scales.

Luciano picked the confused baby up, lifted the tail and something dangly fell out. He grinned.

"A boy!"

"You sure?" Jimi snickered, which had Bruce cracking up.

Sinead named the baby Simon Bowser Koopa-Toadstool in honor of the ancestor who started it all. She wrapped him in a red blanket and held him to her heart, where he would stay for the rest of her life.

A year later, Sinead went through it again to bear a second egg. That autumn, she welcomed a melanistic daughter— Tina Peach Koopa-Toadstool.

Jimi placed the egg in Sinead's lap so her baby could hatch straight into her arms.

Tina didn't take as long as Simon. She stuck her nose out, pushed up and burst free in a shower of goop. Everyone rocked back in shock.

Tina's melanism showed up as coily black hair, black eyes, black claws, black spikes, a smattering of black scales all over her body and black splotches on her deep red shell. She looked like someone splattered black paint on her, and her speckles made her beautiful.

For all that, Tina didn't cry. Her eyes roved around the room, blinking and taking it all in. Simon did the same thing. It was remarkable.

"Wow," Luciano whispered. He held Simon while Sinead swaddled Tina. "We made these."

"We did!" Sinead kissed Tina's nose. "I wish grandpa was here to see them."

Luciano nuzzled his nose against her forehead. "He sounded fun. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet him before he died."

"You wanna hear about grandpa Junior?" Bruce poked his head in. "Just ask Jimi. He'll tell you stories. He knows all about being a grandpa."

"Hush, you." Jimi barked without venom. He reclined next to Sinead, beaming at the new baby. "She's gorgeous."

Both Simon and Tina stared at each other.

Jimi commissioned statues depicting the entire Koopa-Toadstool family to be built on the marked communal "spit spot" in the center of Valley City. They would take ten years to complete, since they were being carved from marble by hand.

And life carried on.

.o

Simon and Tina stood by Sinead's and Luciano's side as the Koopa-Toadstool family statues were unveiled for the first time.

Tina asked, "Mommy, who are these people?"

"Yeah!" Simon circled the statues, tail flicking. "Who are they?"

"Oh, boy," Luciano crossed his arms and grinned. "Can of worms time, right?"

Jimi, Whitney, Toadiel, Eartha and Bruce looked knowingly at each other. Hannah snickered as she signed the question for Darryl.

"Oh, Simon, Tina, you two…ah, heck," Sinead shook her head in disbelief. "It's quite the story. It's full of love. There's a reason your middle names are Bowser and Peach."

"What's love got to do with it?" Tina arched a dark eyebrow. She turned her head, her coily Afro catching the sunlight like a storm cloud.

Simon's hair didn't defy gravity quite the same way. His white curls were looser, falling down to his shoulders in billowy cascades.

Whitney laughed as she circled the statues herself, taking in the lifelike details.

Sinead smiled, wrapped her arms around her children and gazed past them at the statues.

"It started two hundred years ago, when your great-great-great-great-grandpa, King Bowser Koopa, kidnapped Princess Peach Toadstool…"

.o

And somehow, as legends do, the tales of Mario, Luigi, Bowser and Peach flowed into outside-outside and warped backwards through time.

A man named Shigeru Miyamoto woke up one morning after a fantastical dream and transformed it into a beloved franchise.

In 1985, the Super Mario Brothers game emerged across Nintendo Entertainment Systems everywhere, bringing with it all the music and sound effects that would persist throughout the franchise's history.

In 1989, The Super Mario Brothers Super Show was the first seen in the USA.

And later still, two major motion pictures came out. One in 1993, and again in 2023.

Over the years, the games evolved as platforms improved. Story after story, through side-scrollers, three-dimensional maps and RPGs. Gamers sat mashing buttons, cursing in frustration, and cheering in triumph as they streamed on Twitch and posted playthroughs on YouTube.

Thanks to Mr. Miyamoto's dream, people watched Bowser, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Junior and his siblings play out a variety of stories on their screens. Fans immortalized them by creating latibules of love through fanworks.

Not one of them knew the real stories of the pixelated characters leaping across their screens, that they lived, loved and died in a realm beyond magical sewer pipes buried deep beneath their feet.

It's unlikely that anyone from the outside-outside realm will learn of the legendary Koopa-Toadstool legacy because it was lost to time. That's not to say the legend can't leak out. Maybe it already did and all it needs is somebody to write it down, but who would write such a thing?

.o

.o

"…with shortness of breath,
I'll explain the infinite.
How rare and beautiful
it truly is that we exist."

"Saturn" by Sleeping At Last