“Hello, Bowser,” the Emperor greeted.

“Hello, Morton.” Bowser said.

Or to be more accurate, Dry Morton. A Koopa encased entirely in bone and dust, aside from piercing red eyes  He was gray and withered; several decades as a dead pile of remains would do that to anyone. But he was still sixteen feet tall, a gargantuan beast among gargantuan beasts.

The first thing Morton did after this exchange was lean back and breathe a massive beam of fire towards Bowser and the many Koopatrols behind him. The minions were guarded by their armor, and Bowser absorbed the fire as his royal blood dictated. He could not harness it any longer, but he was still a member of the Koopa family through and through.

“You are still the son I always wanted,” Morton said.

“You abandoned me in the Kalimari Desert and told me I was a disgrace,” Bowser said.

“That was then.”

“I was four.”

Morton cackled, his bones jiggling and rattling together. “Dr. Scienstein and Kamek really did a number on me here, didn’t they? They had no idea I was going to have the... vitality as I so now. They serious believed I would be complacent towards their wishes, like that Dry Bowser clone of yours you have. Or, had.”

Bowser didn’t respond. He didn’t care much for Dry Bowser. His absence meant little.

“But I am glad that I awoke when I did. Your family was tearing itself apart. If I had not intervened, your sons may have all ended up killing one another. Instead, I let them simply bow to me, their grandfather.”

“Kamek is their grandfather,” Bowser said.

“Was.”

Bowser’s eyes opened wide; he looked at Kammy, who looked away.

“You have neglected your children for half a year with your trifles. But they will all learn their true place in the Koopa family when this is all said and done. Wendy here is my official liege. Larry and Roy have enlisted in the Royal Defense Force. The rest... did not fare as well, but they will learn, in time.”

“Even... Morton Jr.?” Bowser asked.

Morton laughed. “You giving him that name is an irony I could never lived to have laughed about. It is fortunate that I am undead, then.” He laughed again.

“What happened to him?!”

“I sent him off to the Waffle Kingdom for higher education. What do you think, Bowser? He’s in prison because he simply could not accept the truth of his existence. You never told him, Bowser. He was too loyal to your other son, the self-proclaimed Conqueror.”

Bowser... Jr.? He had no idea which of the five remaining sons would be able to rally the others into some sort of organized faction.

He had missed so much in his time as Bowsette. What had all of this become?

“You’ll never get away with this,” Bowser said. “Now that I am here--”

“Now that you are here, I can finally use your celestial blood to rejuvenate my body,” Morton said. “It’s either you or Morton Jr., and I know you are too soft to let me choose the latter.”

He was right.

“Take him away,” Morton said. “I want him to be put in the darkest cell we have. Then he’ll know what it was like for me to lay a pile of bones for decades.”

Escaped from a prison cell, ended up in a different prison cell. Bowser’s life seemed almost like Peach’s at this point. Captivity was not a very fun exercise but this was definitely a fitting penance for all the harm he had caused over the years.

Such was life.