3Immediately following the last chapter
So, it had had happened. The Senate had given Bowser full control of the media. Now, how to break the news to a certain reporter friend of his? Bowser already knew that Clawdia would be outside the senate building with cameras and crew. He sent his Terrorpin bodyguards to collect her after the meeting adjourned.
She was an independent-minded journalist so such a decision would impact her career and friendship with him on the most fundamental level.
Fortunately, the Terrorpins didn't have far to go.
Bowser moved into the President's briefing room which, for the last several years, had become the King's briefing room.
Within moments of entering Bowser heard Clawdia's complaints to the guards from the President's office—which he had seized for the King—in the senate building.
"Get your hands off me, you...you...censors!" She spat the last word as they opened the door to Bowser's office and threw her inside.
Bowser rose to his feet.
"I said 'gently,' you morons!"
Clawdia picked herself up from the floor as Bowser rushed to her after closing the door.
"Are you alright?" He asked.
She pushed him away.
"What do you care?! I thought I'd come to know you over the past five years, but now I see you are everything I thought you were at the beginning: A spoiled brat of a prince who has become a bully of a tyrant."
"Clawdia," Bowser said in as reassuring a tone as he could muster, "I don't want to censor the media, but the Mushroom Kingdom has infiltrated our news outlets."
"And it's too much to ask you to trust the people's judgement?" She fired back.
"If we didn't have so many hotheads on every point of the political spectrum it wouldn't be...but we do."
"Don't the people have the right to make what you consider a mistake?" She pointed an accusatory finger at him.
"Of course they do," he conceded, but quickly added, "...until they start killing each other!"
Bowser picked up his copies of the Kremling investigation and the two Darklands investigations into his mother and brother's deaths.
"Read these," he said, handing her the reports. It was a plea, not a command.
"I don't care what you and your friend K. Rool have cooked up! I'm not going to waste my brain cells or eyesight on it!"
"Two of these reports were called for by my grandmother! K. Rool and I had nothing to do with those!"
Clawdia looked at the titles of the two investigation findings carried out in the late Queen Wendy's reign and threw all three papers in Bowser's face.
"Let's say you are right," Clawdia began. "It still doesn't give you the right to censor those who question you."
"I welcome questions!" Bowser shouted. "What I don't welcome is the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that got my mom and brother killed!"
Clawdia looked away, knowing that Bowser had valid reasons for distrusting the media, but being just as sure that his current course of action was not the answer.
Before she could respond, Bowser turned his back to her and held his head low.
"I don't want to see that happen again." He turned his head to look her in the eye. "What if one of your reports sets off some nutjob somewhere in the kingdom and the next death is you? Do you know what I'd do knowing I could have saved you and failed?"
"I'm a grown Koopa and a reporter," she said. "I don't need your protection."
Bowser turned to face her and walked toward her, reaching for her hands...
"Clawdia..." he said, his tone pleading.
She didn't need his protection and drove that point home by slapping him.
"You don't understand..." he pleaded, trying to bring her to his side.
She gave him another slap.
"You think I'm a child? A weak female?" She raised her hand to strike him again.
"You don't understand..." he repeated just as gently while grabbing her raised arm at the wrist before she could deliver her blow. It wasn't either of those things. He knew she was an adult, and he knew she was strong...it was because...because... "I love you."
The statement shocked him as much as her. It shocked him but it instantly clicked. That was why he cared so much: she was the missing family he so desperately needed.
She tried to slap him with her remaining hand, only for him to catch it as well and pull her in for a kiss.
He avoided her lips—he would not go there without her consent—but put his lips to her forehead.
She felt surprisingly disappointed. For all that she was angry with him, she wanted a real kiss. K
She broke his hold on her wrists and pulled his head in for their lips to touch.
Time melted away as the two Koopas lost themselves to the warmth of their embrace.
Only a few seconds passed, but both knew the impact of this one moment would last the rest of their lives.
Roolenstein Keep, Crocodile Isle, Three Months Later
K. Rool had not heard from his apprentice in nearly three months. The Kremling King was ready to explode on his Koopa protégé as he paced back and forth in front of his throne. True he'd learned from the news and his spies that Bowser now controlled all the media in Darklands, and from his spies that production of airships and Bullet Bills was proceeding apace—but nothing from Bowser himself.
You couldn't take holidays when you were planning a war! Bowser should know this!
As K. Rool paced, he rubbed his throbbing temples. This stress was giving him such a headache.
The last thing his head needed was for the telephone to suddenly start ringing when it did.
Great! K. Rool muttered to himself placing his thumbs over his tear ducts. You raise two sunken islands to be seen as a living god, only for it to work too well!
K. Rool was about to give whichever one of his agencies was on the other end a piece of his mind, when he noted the international number...Bowser!
K. Rool put on his compassionate face and answered in his most concerned voice.
"Bowser? Are you alright?" K. Rool's pitch rose from low to high over the two-syllable name and dipped in the question, giving him the air of a concerned parent as he sat on his throne.
"I'm sorry for not getting back to you sooner, sir, but I have been distracted with personal issues."
That annoyed K. Rool. What "personal issue" could be more important than their plan to destroy the Mushroom Kingdom?
Still, he had to give his apprentice the impression he cared, at least for the time being.
"Is everything ok?" K. Rool asked.
"Better than ok," Bowser responded. "I'm getting married!"
K. Rool could guess from the intelligence his spies brought him, but he couldn't be 100% sure until he heard it from Bowser himself.
"Your bride?"
"Her name is Clawdia." That confirmed K. Rool's suspicions.
"I'm trying to keep everything low key given my family history, but I assure you I am as committed to conquering the Mushroom Kingdom as ever. More so, now that I've got someone to protect."
K. Rool couldn't help but smile...a genuine smile. He smiled not for Bowser finding a soulmate but because the Koopa King had so willingly bought every lie K. Rool had sold him about the Mushroom Kingdom's involvement in his family tragedies, when the true guilty party had been K. Rool himself.
"I'm happy for you, Bowser," K. Rool said, mustering as much false warmth and enthusiasm as he could. In truth, he was concerned, for his spies had told him everything about Clawdia that one could observe. The thing that irked him most was that she was an investigatory journalist who now had access to the intelligence file K. Rool had given Bowser.
Naturally, K. Rool had his own copy in the same Koopa language that Bowser and now Clawdia were reading. What if the journalist found holes in his version?
"Thank you, sir," Bowser responded to K. Rool's offer of congratulations before continuing, "But I need to know, should Toadley give me a more concrete pretext for war, can I count on your forces to support mine in an allied attack?"
K. Rool wanted to let out a sigh of relief, but that would betray the fact that he had been nervous. For now, Bowser was still on board with his plans. If his soon-to-be wife kept digging though, she might find something that could expose the truth: that K. Rool, not the Mushroom Kingdom, was responsible for her husband's family tragedies.
"Of course, Bowser. We have a saying on Crocodile Isle, 'Kremia rules the waves.' We will lend that aid to Darklands. My naval and ground forces will be yours to command in the conflict with the Toads, if. and inevitably, when it comes to war. I give you my word, king to king."
Bowser did let out a relieved sigh.
"Thank you, sir," the younger king said.
"Of course," K. Rool said warmly, "That's what allies do."
Silence lingered for a moment as both sought the next thing to say. Eventually, K. Rool recognized he'd said all he needed to say and ended with, "But for the moment, enjoy the calm before the storm with Clawdia. Since you want a low-key wedding, I shan't attend, but I wish you both the best. Good-bye and congratulations."
"Good-bye, sir, and thank you."
When Bowser hung up, K. Rool slammed the phone back into its receiver and bellowed in anger.
Of all the possible mates you could have selected, you settled on an investigatory journalist?!
K. Rool had been very clever to obscure though not totally hide his hand. You could never be 100% sure who was working for whom in the game of counterintelligence and an air-tight alibi would have made K. Rool only seem more suspicious. He had obscured his role to the best his intellect and resources were capable of, but he would be delusional to believe that his concealment was perfect.
K. Rool decided that Clawdia had to go before she got too nosy. And he knew just who to blame: the Mushroom Kingdom yet again.
Bowser would have to react immediately then, knowing those he loved were unsafe even in Darklands.
K. Rool rubbed his eight fingers together as he felt his worry reshape itself into confidence.
Bowser marrying Clawdia was a good thing—provided he acted swiftly enough.
It couldn't be before the wedding or Bowser would immediately suspect him.
In fact, it couldn't be until this low-key marriage was common knowledge. That may take a while, but you could only keep a queen in seclusion for so long, and you could only keep a journalist from investigating for so long...
K. Rool tapped the intercom button beneath the handrest of his throne.
"Yes, Your Majesty?" the voice on the other end answered.
"Send me agents Kloak and Kackle."
The two agents K. Rool requested were members of the Mortikremling culture, hybrid Boo-Kremlings whose ancestry dated back to times when the early Koopas, Boos, and Snowmads lived on the islands just north of the Ancient Kremling Empire.
K. Rool passed the time it took the agents to get to the throne room transitioning into his role of director.
He just exchanged his crown for a beret when they literally moved through the door catching his attention.
"You called for us, Majesty?" The transparent, skeletal Kackle said, holding his spectral cutlass across his chest, while the invisible, but more solidly clothed Kloak just hovered.
K. Rool put on black glasses as he sat back down and said, "Yes, I have production coming up called The Tragedy of the Hidden Queen. The release date is uncertain, but I want you to familiarize yourselves with a certain Clawdia Koopstorm. She will likely be in the starring role of the Queen of Darklands. The two of you will be her Toad assassins employed by the Mushroom government."
The two Mortikremlings looked at each other and disappeared into puffs of smoke. A second later they reappeared as a Toad with a blue Mushroom head and one with a pink Mushroom head, sunglasses, and dark suits—the same "Toad" agents Queen Wendy's security officers noted in their files.
K. Rool smiled, teeth bare.