It was with a shoe against my face that I decided I would write all this down. If you are interested in these sorts of things, you have no doubt heard of me: the shape-changer, lord of Platformia, mentor of Evilfied Bianka, the greatest fighter of the QuarterMasters (19∞8 - onward) franchise. That last has been debated by some with inflated ideas of their own martial worth.

Not an auspicious beginning for a Final Boss, no. But, as the ancients say (though I yet laugh at the quaintness of the scale of Western antiquity): “Errare humanum est,” no?

You might be wondering how I got here, with the high-top sneaker of a self-indulgent, self-righteous simpleton currently imprinting the word “Nike” in my face with no concept of the irony there. Well, too bad. I am not rehashing all of that. Any provincial hayseed can find the tales of my greater exploits: How I strode into the Princess’s own chambers in the tower of Ludopolis while the Emperor and Victoria distracted them. How I quelled several potential rebellions on the Shard. How I made use of my natural skills of changing my appearance to do so much more than just fool the Player; rather, I wove a web of deceit around him into which he could not but wrap himself. For it is one matter to change one’s skin, and another to play the part. I do not receive a fraction of the praise I deserve for my talent of play-acting.

I do the voices and everything! I mean, come on!

No, I will hide nothing. This will be an unvarnished account of my worst hour. Radical transparency, and what have you. A strong man lies, but a weak man hides truth.

Let us examine where things went wrong. Points of failure. Key learnings for next time. For one, I do not actually know what the conch was or where it came from. The bumpkins out here in Platformia are forever unearthing some kind of relic or another, always capable of shifting the balance in the wrong hands. It is exhausting. My eye muscles are strained from rolling. I truly, emphatically cannot even, with them. It is like, this is a platform-world. You do not need prophecies and magic and things here.

You people are supposed to be content to jump from ledge to ledge. Is not that what it is all about, really? So whenever one of these things crops up, it is always a total fire drill to collect it. Often we store them, filing them away like a good Empire should. Suck dry the resources, break the pillars of culture—that is Imperialism 101, a course which I quite literally taught to Bosses in training. They are always these half-baked and I will not deign to tell you where those are kept, which leads me to my second key learning.

You really must be able to trust your team. That goes for loyalty and competence both. I think Victoria made a marvel of modern engineering with the clockwork Armory. (Well, not modern, because really the idea is quite regressive. But would you not agree that that is the beauty of it? The artform?) I am uncertain about these scroblins though. They are deployed to fix things so perpetually, so contiguously that I must wonder if they were ever up to the task? That is what one gets when one recruits from the early gameworlds, I suppose. Next time, I will have them make an automaton to handle maintenance. Design their own replacements, engineer themselves out of a job, and throw them into the gears, already crusted with the bones of those who did not live up to my admittedly exacting standards.

And, speaking of trust:

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt.

That is Shakespeare, another overblown Western icon. Specifically spoken by a character named Lucio. No, not that Lucio.

I am no fool. I can sense treachery somewhere in the ranks. So let us undergo a process of elimination, which is, ironically, another class I teach students of Bosshood about how to get methodically get rid of opponents and competitors.

The Sorrow Troopers are unable to become turncoats, as far as we know. Although they look relatively advanced, their origins are of course in Ultimate Requiem: Empire of Sorrow (19Ω4), and the code that governs their decision-making behaviors is relatively primitive. It is turn-based, for gods’ sake, and it goes like this: “My turn? If yes, attack.” I do not know how they even lace their boots in the morning.

The scroblins are probably capable of treachery, and indeed, their nature is treacherous. They hail from Hop Skip Legends 2: Scroblin Attack (19∞3), the original of which “came out” in the other realm in 19∞1, so no doubt it was developed in the haze of the ↯0s. Although they have some sense of logic and could certainly “do the math” and “see the writing on the wall” as it were, these are vicious industrialists too fixated on ruining nature and disrupting ecosystems to really wargame out victory scenarios.

No. I am afraid that the fact that I am here being humiliated by a skinny-armed whelp, with no particular skills or powers beyond jumping, must be due to a loftier conspiracy. It galls me to nausea to think that I have been betrayed at the highest level. By my top collaborator, Victoria. Or worse, my most trusted mentee, Evilfied Bianka. She whom I plucked out of the worst of the worlds, a cozy do-nothing gameworld about talking and farming. Gardening. Whatever. I saw her potential in her darkest hour, and am now repaid.

Oh well! I suppose that is the natural curve of things in Boss circles. Let he whom has not elbowed his own master out of a high window throw the first stone, as it were. No sense in beating myself up about it:

The mind is its own place, and in its self

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

That my favorite speech by the most inspirational character in Paradise Lost. Hail horrours, hail Infernal world. I think I took the wrong lesson from it, or perhaps Milton was wrong to treat it ironically.

To that end, enough lollygagging.

The pain of admitting he kicked me in the face was so much worse than the blow itself, but there it is. I almost feel better now. Somehow, they must have contacted the Princess, as she is the only one with the power to do something like this. I, a Boss, of course overrode the natural rules of platformers wherever I went. Everything is a fighting game for me, because that is what I am good at, and more importantly, that is what I choose it to be.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

But Bosses do that passively, and only in a limited area around their persons. Otherwise, what is the purpose of ruling? What would be the reason for the Total Conversion? It is a pretty sweet gig, so to speak, to tear up everything these peons know and love, and yet retain my own sense of comfort and order. In that sense, we Bosses are always on our home turf.

I am not going to call the Crystallicer a point of failure, but rather a discovery. In retrospect, I suppose I ought to have guessed that it would not work on him–not permanently. I over-relied on it anyway, and it felt good to really let loose and pummel him… until the Princess’s trick took effect.

There is one thing I do admire about the West: its bloodlust. My people originated in an arcade gameworld, one that took an established Japanese concept of fighting games and added the gimmick of violence so shocking and over-the-top that it was the subject of investigation by (I am told) the highest powers in that realm. My own acts made the hearts of the gods quail and failter. They threw their hands over their children’s eyes… because of me. So you know that went right on my Boss résumé.

Violence, and money. In that way, QuarterMasters (19∞8) was Western self-parody. I myself have been called a problematic archetype. It seems that I cannot but cause some kind of panic, no matter the realm.

So I thought it poetic to Crystallice him and pull out his heart. Well, we know how that ended. The Princess’s subversion really was quite clever, shifting to another fighting game, but a type that permitted this hapless yearling to call upon his more brutally physical accomplices. Then I was subjected to the most humbling experience of my life, struck by a veritable rogues’ gallery of imbeciles. The jailer of Ludopolis, Torrence. The philosopher stomped on my head with his sandals. The Princess’s obvious lover, Addrion. My old rival, Luciano the Cost Cutter appeared to use “whirling price slash” against me, a move I have blocked literally millions of times in thousands of places and could easily have done so again in other circumstances. The peasant from the somehow perennially relevant fantasy gameworlds dared to slap me with his gardening trowel–more symbolically hurtful than anything else, as it reminded me of Bianka’s abandonment. Even the dog from the other realm took a crack at me. This had the unfortunate effect of breaking him out of his crystalliced prison.

Injury, meet insult.

I took some modicum of solace noticing that, since we were in Tag Fighter mechanics, no Final Transaction could be committed against me. Although, perhaps it would be better to be withdrawn and spent than to endure the disgraces ahead of me.

In place of a killing blow, I felt something leaving me. My life essence? My HP? No, worse–my reward. The Red Radian drew forth from my body, suspended by an invisible hand, and I was helpless to snatch it back into my person. This was the ultimate sign of defeat, true judgment by the fickle but absolute systems that governed this place, shiftier than even myself yet irresistible, at once transient and intransigent. I saw red, not only from my fury, not only from the blood in my eyes. The Radian, an aspect of the erstwhile sun of the Screenwilds, washed the world in a crimson more complete than a bloodbath, a vermillion ruddier than a freshly opened jugular vein, a rouge more–well, this should be sufficient to tell you it was redder than red.

My prize… gone. Snatched right out of my body. All active-duty Bosses are given a reward, not for themselves, but in case they are ever defeated. This is definitional, but I also think the powers that be want us to have something to lose. It is quite a nefarious and un-Bossy way to be treated, but nonetheless exhilarating. What a thrill to know that my actions matter!

And there I was, paying the high cost of that exciting way of life.

That callow hatchling snatched it out of the air and left me to marinate in my own blood, mucous, saliva and tears. His dog seemed happy. Whatever.

Cannot believe I kissed that guy just to get the Compendium.

I stumbled away and saw him talking hurriedly with the fantasy yokel, the seneschal, who had returned to what had been the outer access walk of what had been my perfect Court of Clocks. There was a turtle for some reason. Then they all fucked off someplace, I had to assume with all five of the Radians in tow. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before he saw through my lie, and learned that I was not responsible for his being here. Not directly, at least.

My hour hand finally collapsed, and the great central axle gave way. The throne and I tumbled into crushing darkness.

Though I expected to be destroyed, even I learned not to doubt me in those harrowing moments. I fell down the gullet of the winding, grinding clockwork. I watched great square teeth rush inward to squeeze my body to pulp. I was broken and mutilated, digested by my own design. (Well, Victoria’s. But I gave the order, and had final approval on everything.) I was deposited like so much excrement in some dark and wet cavity belowground.

Gobo was there, the traitor. He gleamed even in darkness, his crystal skin bluish-white. At least I would have a little bit of vengeance. At least I would take one prize down with me, one symbol of my wrath, into whatever afterlife existed in this reordered world.

The green space exterminator was there, too. She reared back to strike me down, and I must confess that she could have easily. I tried to change into a reflection of his beloved Princess again, but in my weakened state, I was unable to summon the form. Anyway, she looked at me with the most reprehensible pity, and even if I forgive all the others for kicking my ass, which is unlikely, I will never forgive her for sparing me.

I followed her, lugging the massive frozen dracken behind her while thunder shot through the ground below and the walls crunched inward around us. Piles of gears and hot rebar bent ever and ever downward over us. She was hard pressed to maneuver the icy, dragon-shaped statue through. I bled, oozed, and crawled mere feet behind them.

Fresh air rushed in from the direction she was heading, at least, as fresh as any air in the Red Hot Caliente Zone (which is NOT a name I gave it, just so we are clear on that). In her struggle to cross it with her burden, she burned off the end of his tail, likely maiming him for life if he were ever returned from his crystalliced state. A small pleasure. I myself lost much time in getting across uninjured, with the ceiling pressing down over me.

But I did it. I crawled out of there. In what I knew were my final breaths, I was greeted by smoky air, an army of Street Toughs inexplicably running away instead of helping me, and a battalion of Ohmpressors flayed open like a grim orchard. That, and the disapproving purple eyes of the Harlequin Emperor of Sorrow, his sickly comedy mask resting against his chest.

“My lord,” I croaked. I made as though kneeling, although it was quite obvious that I was mortally injured. I cannot fathom what I looked like, little more than a quivering mass of gore that spoke.

He put his hands on his hips. “Tut, tut, Xue-Fang,” he said, his unstable voice crackling with every possible emotion. “What a mess.”

I tried to croak an imploring rebuttal, but he angled a head and winced at the impropriety of my speaking. The words were not coming, anyway. “At this point, your code would be more useful recycled.” He shook his head, his wild hair swaying. “It makes me sorry to do this. But don’t take that as an apology.” He giggled.

Actually, you know what? I have changed my mind, I am going to burn this.

You know what that really grinds my gears? Scribe, strike that. What really gets my goat? Ugh. Strike that as well. You know what pisses me right off? Everyone always forgets the end of that Seneca quote: “perseverare autem diabolicum.”