Bowser crushed another can of Penguin Proof and tossed it towards the recycle bin (even Bowser knows that saving the planet is important). It bounced off the rim and fell onto the floor. Just like the last seven.

Ugh. The eighth can. Just like he always had eight main henchmen in all his stupid plans that always failed in stupid ways. And how did Wario drink this stuff? Sure, it got you drunk, but it was nasty. If it weren’t the only thing left in the villa, he wouldn’t have even considered pounding it down.

He missed always having quick access to Froggie Drink. That stuff sure cured his HP real quick...

Once again, he started to cry, tears streaming down his face at infuriating rates. Oh, why did he pick this stupid place with its stupid magical emotion zones and these stupid beautiful scenic views and all this stupid great... ugh, whatever.

It had been several weeks since Bowser abdicated the throne and moved to Vibe Island, where the people were few and the nature was beautiful... or ugly and depressing, depending on which emotions you were currently being forced to invoke.

Or maybe it had been days. He didn’t know. He’d been drinking so much he had essentially given up on keeping track of the passage of time. Who cares?

Not Bowser.

“I mean, I kinda thought it’d be different...” Bowser muttered to himself. There was literally nobody else in this villa, on final order of Bowser himself, of course, but he was still in the habit of announcing his thoughts out loud just in case anyone was listening. After all, if a Koopa falls in the middle of a forest and there’s nobody to hear them, do they make a sound?

Bowser didn’t even know if he was really a Koopa. Sure, he had a shell, but pretty much no other Koopa looked anything like him. Maybe this was all a lie too, told to him by his stupid dumb dad Kamek and his stupid dumb grandma Kammy and his stupid dumb royal title.

Whatever!

Nobody even called to check up on him. Not one text message from King Bob-Omb or a consolatory call from Platypunk, even after all that damn time they spent cornering the market with tax offices together...

Honestly, he just wanted someone, anyone to--

Knock knock! Ring ring! Knock!

“Oh my Brighton, I’m coming, I’m coming!” Bowser groaned. It took an incredible amount of effort to push his way-too-muscled body off the ground and stumble to the front door. If he were less stupid he would have at least taken a couple servants with him, maybe a nubile young assistant who was secretly extremely infatuated with him like in Jerry Maguire, but that simply wasn’t the case here. He had to open the door himself, like a peasant.

“Who is it?” he asked, his vision too blurry to make anything out at first, what with the sun hitting his eyes just as all the alcohol in his blood surged to his brain.

There was... nobody here?

“Down here,” a ruffled old voice said.

He looked down. It was a Bob-omb with a fantastic beard and a wheel attached to his back. Wait, how did he... nevermind.

“My name is Admiral Bobbery,” he began. “I was sent as a courier across these great seas to your beautiful villa to convey to you an important message. It concerns a great many topics, but for one in particular--”

“Who from?”

“Well, uh,” Bobbery stammered. “It’s from, well, the Royal Court of the House of Toadstool--”

Bowser slammed the door in his face.

Nope.

Not happening. He wasn’t even going to BOTHER listening to any of that. It was probably something like, “Oh no Bowser, Mario and Luigi are trapped in the dream realm and now they’re being attacked by the evil master Wart! Help us!” Or something like, “We need another heavy for our new Karting tournament, and since you DID grant us a lifetime lease on Bowser’s Castle Track... Maybe you’d like to compete?” Or, even in the best-case scenario it’d be something like, “Waluigi has launched a meta-nuclear missile that will circle around the Earth five times before hitting Peach’s Castle! Help us disarm it or the Mushroom Kingdom will be retroactively erased from having ever existed!”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Any result from Bowser refusing to participate would only benefit his cause of no longer giving a care about the world around him.

And he would continue to do that.

Hmm... looked like he was out of Penguin Proof. Now he needed to get wasted on something else, because as a giant lizard who was built like a rock, he needed way too many drinks to actually feel anything. It was almost a wasted effort on his part, to be honest.

Maybe he should try drugs.

He decided to go down to the armory, where they kept all the power-ups seized on Vibe Island during the original takeover back, what, ten years ago? He couldn’t even remember at this point. That was the time that, instead of kidnapping Peach, his Hammer Bros thought kidnapping Mario and Luigi would be what saved them all. But little did they know, they were idiots. Peach was clearly never going to marry him that way, but even more clearly, she was powerful enough to ruin him as well. Which she did.

Bowser was a failure. And he languished in it.

But because Peach never destroyed this villa or anything, it looked like all the items his men stole from the Mario Household were still sitting here gathering dust. He knew Mario Mario was a dusthead so there HAD to be some great stuff among everything.

Let’s see...

There were a few Ztars in a pile. Whenever they held parties the Ztars absorbed the stars that other people had collected, but he wasn’t sure what they actually... did. Maybe he could, like, eat one and see?

There were a couple Mecha Fly Guys he could wind up and send flying around. That... was useless.

A bunch of wooden hammers, a Cricket Pie, a Mini Mushroom, a whole chest full of e-coins, a frog suit... lots of weapons and food items. Bowser wondered if they could have used these more effectively to fight against Peach that time...

There was what appeared to be a chocolate bar labeled “Fudjie.” He had no idea if that was a code word for drugs, but it definitely looked like the bar’s expiration date was sometime in 1991, and he wasn’t touching that.

There was a DVD copy of “The Social Media Killer,” some dumb thriller movie, with a sticky note attached that said “Return to Ninji ASAP.” With the voluptuous female on the cover, Bowser wasn’t sure that the movie was the type that you usually lent out very often... He wasn’t touching that either. Well... for now.

He wasn’t sure at all why the Mario Bros had a Whiskered Eggplant, but he ate it without hesitation, hoping that it would get his mind racing with the thoughts of euphoria and forgetting his awful past as the world’s worst villain. Sigh... nothing happened. That’s basically what he expected. A lot of the power-ups here probably weren’t going to work anymore, seeing as how long it had been since they were collected. He doubted that even the Poltergust 3000 sitting over in the corner would work without serious repairs, from all the cobwebs covering it.

Oh, there was one promising item here. Those devious Marios and their deviant ways... They had some Reverse Shrooms here all along? These babies were rare, but they really messed up your mind, making you move backwards against your own will. But if you just let the motion take you, and with some alcohol it was easy, it’d probably be a total trip.

Bowser was just about to take one, when he noticed a glittering item way off in the corner of the room. It was a sparkling crown of gold and pink, resembling a Toad’s cap with a crown around it. If that were literally the case that would be disgusting and morbid, but it looked more like a special magical item.

And it was one of Peach’s...

Ugh, he tried not to think about her these days. With how close they had come to actually being married, with how much he tried to show her how he cared about her, his complete failure in everything he tried was just a striking realization in his brain that he was useless. This item was surely a reminder of that.

And yet...

And yet.

He took the crown, its glowing aura almost calling out to him. This probably wasn’t drugs, but it was a powerup of some sort, and he wondered if... Maybe if he just kind of...

Bowser’s body shook.

Everything went white as a shining light surrounded him.

And then--

***

Bowser was in the bedroom. Not his bedroom, but that of his former wife, a room that had not been used in so long he had almost forgotten it existed. It was the only one with a full-body mirror, and he absolutely needed to use it here.

His face... it was so...

This black dress... This collar around his neck... This crown on his head...

Besides the horns and tail and shell, he looked almost exactly like Princess Peach, all the way down to his nicely-shaped... uh, features.

He smiled, flashing several fangs.

This... this felt amazing.

Everything was different now.