Bowser's lament

“You know, at first, I really thought it was just a fluke.” His voice had a raspy quality to it. It was the voice of a whiskey-drinking chain smoker. The kind of voice that made the best blues singers. “I mean, I pretty much just swooped in with my Koopa Troopers, and a handful of Goombas. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was taking over this place. I mean, it was like invading France or Poland. Not that I’m comparing myself to Hitler or anything. It was like it had never even occurred to them that the Mushroom Kingdom could be invaded!” Bowser chuckled to himself and paused to extinguish his cigarette in a dirty glass ashtray. It erupted in a plume of smoke as he crushed it out. He then reached for his soft pack of Camel filters, tapped one out and set it alight with his flaming breath.

“Like I was saying, this was my first time invading anybody, so it was a huge rush.” His eyes went wide and he cracked a huge, toothy smile. “I captured the princess, set crews to digging bottomless pits and had hot lava imported by the truckload.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Pretty textbook stuff. The way Ganondorf, Dr. Robotnik or Mother Brain would do it. A lot of people don’t realize this, but there’s a lot of work that goes into super villainy. It’s not just a matter of ‘invade, capture princess, defeat hero’, you have to lay the groundwork, handle payroll, set up supply chains. You’re not gonna believe this, but we’ve got nearly as many Koopa Troopers doing back office admin work as we do on the front lines. Some villains can handle that all on their own. Mother Brain is one of those, but you gotta expect that on account of she’s a giant brain in a tank. Me, I’m more of a manager; I delegate these things out to my kids, for the most part. They’re pretty bright. Except for Morton.”
“Anyway,” he crushed out another cigarette, “call it pride, but I was riding pretty high after all that. I even started looking at conquering other places. It’s tough though, pretty much all the good real estate is already accounted for. Hyrule’s a nice place, but if I have to fight Ganondorf and that Link guy for it, well,” He fell into a coughing fit for a moment.  “You can count me out. That Ganon dude gives me the creeps.”

 He swept an errant lock of red hair away from his eyes with a massive claw. “So, where was I? Oh yeah, right, so there I was, celebrating my takeover of the Mushroom kingdom, when I hear that some douche bag plumber had some idea he was going to rescue the princess. You should’ve seen this guy; Fuckin’ ridiculous. He had his initial written on his hat. Did he think he was gonna forget his name?” He laughed from his belly until he fell into a coughing fit again.  His expression turned more serious “Actually, that was a possibility, this guy ate more mushrooms than a hippie in the desert.”

“Long story short, he beat me, rescued the princess, all that jazz. After word got out that I’d fallen into a pool of lava, my minions packed up and left, and it was all over for a while.” Bowser sighed and lit another cigarette. “So, what do you do? I was pretty crushed. The funny thing about it, you spend all this time, all this effort, and when you finally get everything, the kingdom, the princess, all that, what do you do with it? I was like a dog that finally caught a car. You never really think that far ahead. And that’s what got me thinking. I said to myself ‘Bowser, if you’d been more strategic, you wouldn’t have had these problems.’ So I built a bunch of airships and recruited all kinds of fire-breathing, hammer throwing freaks and I thought to myself ‘This is how you should’ve done it the first time.’”

“Well, the same dickhead comes along and beats me again! That was the point where it started becoming a problem. I couldn’t stop myself. I don’t even know how many times I’ve captured and lost the Mushroom Kingdom since then. That was back in the late 80’s so you do the math. It was like… I’d get all depressed about losing the Kingdom and I’d think to myself ‘Hey, you know what’d make you feel better? Conquering the Mushroom Kingdom!’ Sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but that’s not how it feels, you know? And once I captured it, I’d just keep pressing my luck. I never could stop while I was ahead. Why do you think my kids never went into super-villainy after they got out of school? Cause they saw what it did to me, that’s why. They don’t even talk to me anymore. Except for Morton. Anyway, thanks for listening, guys.” The king of the Koopas eyes moistened and he sat down in a grey metal folding chair.

A wild-haired old man in a white lab coat stood up next. He cleared his throat and looked down at the floor in front of him. “Hi, my name is Dr. Wily, and I’m a super-villain…”