The weather was beautiful and the fresh air smelled great from up on the balcony. However, Princess Peach, deposed monarch of the Mushroom Kingdom, could not be out there to enjoy it. While the windows were open, they were also barred, and access to the balcony was now forbidden after her third escape attempt.

So now there was nothing much for her to do with her life except for wandering around the room, reading the stacks of books on her shelves, and laying in bed staring up at the ceiling.

She felt like she was the protagonist of some teen fantasy novel, trapped in a life she didn’t want to live in a fate she wanted to escape from, because she really just wanted to see her girlfriend who was way more exciting than the boring stuffy aristocratic life she had been through for all these years, and yet she found herself in her bedroom alone more often than not.

Not that Peach was literally any of these things, but she sure felt like it sometimes.

Maybe she had been reading too many books lately...

There were a few knocks on her door, and the guards let two guests in. Normally, visits were strictly supervised, but her own handmaidens were certainly allowed to come and go as they pleased.

Now, what Bowsette didn’t know was that these two handmaidens were not ACTUALLY handmaidens, but plain and simple friends of hers, but it wasn’t Peach’s fault that Bowsette had a hard time telling Toads apart.

“Toadette! Toadiko! You’re here!” Peach exclaimed. She hugged her two favorite girls in the whole world together and squeezed them together. “What brings you here today?”

“Well...” Toadette began, but she trailed off. Toadiko nudged her with her shoulder a few times. “Oh, well, we do have some good news!”

“Please, do tell,” Peach said. “Being up here in this room all day, not knowing the way the world is turning... Bowsette won’t even tell me who’s visiting on official business anymore; she just slides reports under my door every week..”

“A lot of things are going badly,” Toadiko said. “Yoshi’s Island is a target for annexation now, and a lot of people are... upset about it...”

“Oh my. That’s the GOOD news?”

“Toadiko! Shut up, dude,” Toadette said. “The good news is that Mario’s coming back! We got a letter from one of his allies, a young man named Gene who has apparently joined Mario’s new team. He’s going around the world fighting minions and bosses to try to reclaim, uh, something. He wasn’t clear. But it means Mario is still out there!”

As he always was. Mario was always going on these grand adventures, collecting things and meeting a whole lot of new characters...

Especially girls... Mario loved collecting new girls and their hearts. He certainly was a ladies’ man and nothing was ever going to change in that regard. He wondered who the new flame was going to be this time. Rekindling his fling with Vivian right in front of Peach was a bit too much for her to take back a few weeks ago, but if everything went all right now, she would be willing to look past all of this. Any of this. She just wanted Mario back.

“I’m really happy for him. I’ll be looking forward to when he gets here,” Peach said, with a hint of envy in her voice. “Is that... all?”

“Okay, so... uhh...” Toadette stammered out a non-response and began to blush. “Princess... is it okay if I tell you something that might be a bit awkward?”

“Go ahead.” Peach stepped back and sat on her bed.

“I think I might know something about Bowsette that... will surprise some people. Like that... she isn’t who she says she is. The reason she looks so much like you is because I think she’s wearing... a Super Crown.”

“A Super Crown?” Peach was aghast. “But those are locked securely in the Royal Treasury. There’s no way for anyone to access it except for...”

“Well...” Toadette’s face was as red as Captain Toad’s cap. “There was one time when I might have, uh, taken one over to Mario’s house to uh... show it to him...”

Peach realized the implications of Toadette essentially roleplaying as Peach herself at Mario’s home and decided never to think about this ever again. “So what you’re saying is that there’s one that was just out there?”

“Well, at least one... at least one at Mario’s house...”

“And so what, Bowsette is Mario trying to pretend to be his own villain?”

“Or someone got their hands on it at some point,” Toadiko added.

“And now Bowsette has it...” Peach considered this. Could this truly be just some random desperate rival using one of the Mushroom Kingdom’s own power-ups against it? And for what? It made no sense. Was it some no-name like Tatanga or something who just couldn’t muster up the resources necessary to plot a new attack? Who knows. “Well, thank you for this new information. If we can figure out who she is, maybe we can--”

Bowsette burst into the bedroom, slamming the door open. “Peach!”

The three women in the room jumped.

She noticed the toads and pointed towards the door, saying, “You two, get out of here! I’m talking to Peach. Alone.”

They scurried away, and then Bowsette was now alone with Peach.

She stood in front of her, hands on her hips with a fiery expression for some time, her tail wagging like a cat about to strike, but she didn’t speak. Peach was a bit confused.

“Bowsette... is there something... wrong?” Peach asked.

Bowsette slumped over. “Yeah...”

“Um, what is it...?”

“I... I don’t want to do this anymore. I hate being a stupid ruler of a stupid kingdom.”

Peach was taken aback. Why was she telling her? They barely knew each other, unless underneath the guise of that Super Crown there was something else. They hadn’t directly spoken in weeks.

“I’m... um... sorry?”

“And I need to admit something to you,” Bowsette said. “I’m Bowser.”