Wow.

Bowsette hadn’t seen anything like it in a long time. And that was saying something considering how many times she had forced her entire armies to gather around the castle while she made some big puffy speech about how they were going to bring down the Mushroom Kingdom once and for all, or whatever.

But the Generals were finally assembling. Whomp King’s Fortress floated directly above Peach’s Castle, and its Whomp and Thwomp denizens patrolled the castle grounds in case of any attackers.

It wasn’t likely, of course; even with the dissolution of the union that created the Mushroom Kingdom, the local municipalities of each city and each region were still around and still surviving. The Mayor of Toad Town was already beginning discussions with its neighboring cities to form a Republic.

Not that Bowsette actually believed that it would all go down without any bloodshed, especially with those bigot nationalist Toads still marching around in their pink shirts chanting about keeping Toad Town “pure.” There was bound to be some fighting once power-hungry authoritarians started trying to carve up a little slice of territory for themselves. That was one of the main reasons she ended up consolidating power in Dark Land for herself; if she was the central ruler, then it would discourage the kind of chaos that these situations usually caused.

However, in the end, she became just the kind of authoritarian that her biological father was. Less brutal, but still a military dictator through and through. So she would admit fully that she was simply wrong.

King Boo had also arrived with his many ghosts now haunting one of the side houses near the castle where guests used to stay when the castle was in governmental use. It was much better that way than to allow the Boos to inevitably haunt and torture the living residents of the castle proper. He greeted Bowsette with a lick to the face, but he and Luigi seemed to be hitting it off better than usual, because Luigi actually went to the guest house of his own accord to visit.

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Along with King Boo arrived his daughter Lady Bow, who immediately greeted Mario with a kiss on the lips. Just when Bowsette had started to think that Mario’s history with the ladies was through and through, another example popped up. Who HADN’T he had his plumberly ways with?

Still, this place was getting a lot livelier now that there were two new armies inhabiting Peach’s castle. Along with the trainees trying to become Knights of the Toadstool, it was almost more people than inhabited the place on a normal occasion. Bowsette honestly felt a bit uncomfortable around so many people. Unlike Bowser’s Castle of days past, this place did not have the space and wide-open arenas for so many people at once. The entire dining hall had been turned from a fancy eating area into what was essentially a cafeteria. They were at the Toadstool Battle School, practically.

Bowsette tolerated it as well as she could. It was still nice these past weeks with being able to train Peach. She had gotten used to her frying pan as a weapon, so Bowsette let her expand upon that, using a magic-infused frying pan that had elemental wind attacks to go along with each swing. She was no adept, but she didn’t collapse after two clashes with Bowsette and a training sword anymore, so it was good progress.

Of course, Bowsette had been training on her own too. Her powers were starting to increase in ways that she had never predicted. Along with her ability to generate fire from any part of her body by increasing her core body temperature, she had also learned to use the flaps of her wings to push opponents away from her, and to do it fast enough that it was useful in real combat situations. She had also figured out, by studying the way that her ex-wife Clawdia’s shell spikes worked, that she could actually do the same thing with her tail. There were three spikes on there that she could launch whenever she wanted; it’d take a while for them to reform, but it was very useful in a dire situation, even if it made her tail look less cool.

All of this was going to be nothing towards fighting Morton, though, and that’s why Bowsette continued training with the Axe as well, hoping and praying to Brighton that it would somehow work to destroy his skeleton even at low magical power, or with none at all.

Two generals wasn’t enough to defeat the forced of Dark Land. Even with Peach training to become the third and Iggy the presumed fourth, they were still three Generals short of a true fighting force. Nabbit should be reporting back any day though, so...

Bowsette was somewhat hopeful for once. That was weird and different.