Brusque & Brooding
War Machine Introspective
Late morning at the Koopa place saw Sombra, remarkably refreshed and well-fed, entering the throne room with his assigned troopa escort. Stepping through the massive doors, the stallion saw Bowser sitting on his throne, picking his razor-sharp teeth for what he assumed to have been bits of a breakfast that could feed a dozen. Memories of the glutton’s meat-stuffed gullet made him glad that he had eaten alone, otherwise he might not have lived it down for second time.
“Ahhhh, the illustrious King Slumbra finally joins his ever wondrous benefactor, wahahaha,” the chilling king greeted, flicking his claws before resting them on the throne. “Take it you had a swell snooze?”
“Yes, surprisingly enough,” Sombra answered. “I’m more surprised that you got up as early as you did. After all that you shoveled down your throat, I’d imagine you’d have gone into hibernation.”
“HA! And normally you’d be right, but not today. I’ve actually got a schedule of events planned that need me up with the albatosses, and much of it involves you!”
“Hm, what?”
The groaning of the double doors interrupted the conversation, and turning back, Sombra saw the cranky hag Kammy enter the room. She stopped by the stallion to size him up, then stuck her head up before striding down the rest of the carpet to the throne. “The workers have been assembled, Your Demandingness.”
“Swell to hear, Kammy. Bring ‘em in.” Kammy bowed, then turned around and brought her bony fingers to her lips to make a piercing whistle. A flood of individuals rushed into the room instantly, knocking Sombra away as they lined up in the center. The unicorn quickly stood back up and composed himself, and taking a spot near the throne he looked at the newcomers: rows of koopa troopas, goombas, para-troopas, Hammer Bros, Shy Guys, two lakitus, a wiggler and even a few bloopers, all loaded with carpentry equipment and hardhats. The crotchety crone skulked among the ranks, inspecting each one with a scrutinous eye, as Bowser leaned in Sombra’s direction.
“Meet the Castle Rebuild Division: the meanest bunch of builders to ever use a nail. No job is too great, no task too messy, and no project is too hopeless for them to handle. I figure if I’m owing you a castle, I’ll give ya one that won’t break so easily, and these are the guys to make it happen.”
"They await further orders," Kammy reported, as she took a step to the side of the throne unoccupied by Sombra. Bowser gave a firm nod, then stood up and stomped down to his minions with his arms sorta clasped behind his shell. He paced back and forth before them, scanning them intently. The workers stood rigid and focused before his gaze as he spoke.
“I see a lot of fresh faces among you. A good many who weren’t around from the beginning, who remember of the old days and the lands we hearken from. But out there is a pitch-black dirt ball called World 3, and dead center in it is a pile of rubble: all that remains of an architectural fossil that I used to call one of my own castles. It was large, ugly to look at, and was pretty much only a long hallway. No bedrooms, no baths, not even a breakfast nook. Something that was best left forgotten to the ages.
“But today, you are all to go out into that miserable level, find that sad pile, and put it back together. And not only are you going to reassemble that living-space abomination, you’re going to make it better. You’re going to update the design and install every living commodity advancement that’s come out in the past twenty years. Not only that, but it must also be fit for a king, a ruthless king, a dastardly baddie of the night who devours souls and steals candy from babies every other day of the week. You’ll build it like you were building your very own dream house of evil. I’m talking spike traps, collapsing ceilings, lava flows, the works. And it’s going to look nice. It’s gonna sparkle; heck, it’s going to shine with perfection! And I know it’s gonna be done because it’s going to be done by my own workers. Workers that never quit, workers that never complain, and workers that never take breaks upon pain of torture.
“You’re gonna work hard because you’ve been trained hard. You’ve faced disasters no mortal contractor should ever have to see and you turned them around, time and time again. And you know why? Because you’re the best, and the best never surrender until completion. And that is your primary goal in this project: completion, with flying freakin’ colors. What that castle used to be is no more; you’ll show no mercy in its reconstruction. You’re gonna tear into that junk heap like fruit through a Yoshi; you’re gonna rip out whatever’s left of that foundation and use it to make the finest darn doorstop imaginable, for the best darn castle imaginable! You’re gonna do it quick, you’re gonna do it mean, you’re gonna do it with corners wholly intact! Cuz that’s what you do, that’s what you were trained to do, born to do, and Angry Sun be my witness if any one of My hardened warriors backs down from a challenge they’ve proven time and again to annihilate without effort! Now get out there and make your King proud!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaaa!”
“Bowser Rules!”
“Rock And Rooooooll!”
Waving their hammers and blueprints, the weekend warriors stampeded out of the throne room and went charging over the drawbridge and off into the distance in less than a minute, crying havoc and praise to their king as a roiling dust cloud rose in their wake. From a window, Bowser looked down with a prideful smirk.
“That was impressive,” Sombra spoke as he approached his beaming host. “Given how easily I got your troops to switch sides before, I’m surprised to see the sheer fervent loyalty you garner from them.”
“I wouldn’t be in this business long as I have if I were lousy at inspiring confidence in the troops,” Bowser turned from the window and looked at his guest with a devious grin. “Speaking of which, wait till you see the first bit of entertainment I have planned for you!”
“For me?” Sombra asked, pointing a hoof at himself. “Um, that rousing speech was entertainment enough I should s—”
“Don’t be like that!” Bowser slapped an arm around Sombra’s shoulders as he walked him to the exit. “You’re gonna love it, guaranteed. I know I will.”
'Oh no, what’s this simpleton playing at?' Sombra thought, dread filling his head as his overbearing host led him out of the throne room practically against his will.
A few winding hallways and stairs later, Sombra and Bowser had reached what appeared to be the soldier barracks, based on the numbers of spike-hatted goombas and armored troopas that were milling about. Towards the end of a particularly wide hall there were a crowd of troops crowding around and shuffling out an exit, but Bowser stopped his guest a ways from them.
“My men are gathering for today’s special entertainment, but for me and you, we get VIP seats,” Bowser directed with a grin as he pushed open a door to his right that led into a narrower, more secluded hall. Sombra followed Bowser’s lead down the torch-lit corridor, a light and clamor growing steadily as they neared the end. Turning a corner, a flare of noon sunlight blinded the stallion briefly, and when his vision cleared he saw a large, circular training field, its edges packed with cheering soldiers. The cheers, he quickly realized, were for Bowser, who triumphantly moved over to a shaded observer’s box while waving his arms with an obnoxious smile. Sombra followed the koopa into the box, watching him take a seat in an observer’s throne which, to his chagrin, was the only seat in the booth. Taking a second to grind his teeth, Sombra sided beside the throne and looked to his attention-hog landlord.
“This is the entertainment: parading around your armed forces, or showing off your shameless levels of hamming-it-up?” Sombra ventured.
“Not at all!” Bowser answered in high spirits. “This is clearly a firing ceremony.”
Intrigued by that, Sombra took a closer look at the training field and suddenly noticed that something was sticking up in the cleared middle: a tall wooden post with a red cone on top, and tied to it, struggling, was a blue-clothed Snifit with an eyepatch and scar on his mask. Sombra raised an eyebrow; things suddenly became interesting.
“I call this assembly to Silence!” The chatter of the soldiers ceased immediately at their lord’s command. “Today, for the crime of making a poorly-built bomb and endangering the life of your ever-compassionate dictator, the Empire’s head bomb-maker is to be dealt punishment. How do you plead, knave? Huhhuh, such a weird word.”
“B-but, my King! I crafted it to your precise specifications!” the Snifit pleaded whilst struggling. “I looked it over fifty times upon completion, and found no fault whatsoever. The button was the only means of setting it off!”
“Oh, there was a fault alright: the fact the button looked like the rest of the dang thing. Would it have killed ya to put some different coloring around it, or at least an arrow pointing to where it was so I’d know what not to touch?”
“That was the same exact suggestion I offered, but you, my King, you dismissed it, on the grounds that doing so would ruin the camouflage and give it away!”
...Really? Sombra thought in disgust at the stupidity that was coming to light.
“Enough of your excuses!” Bowser hollered. “You know, I was originally going to string you up from the outer wall and have the Spear Guys have at ya, but because I have a special guest in attendance, I thought I’d give him some entertainment. Then I thought, heck, why not entertain all my Loving Subjects as well?” This brought on an uproar of cheers from the warrior assembly in appreciation for their ruler. Bowser raised and lowered his arm to signal the congregation back to silence. “So bomb-maker, what say you: How do you plead?”
“I was just following your ordeeeeers!” the Snifit screamed, practically crying in sheer panicked desperation.
“Then follow these: you stand relieved.” From the side of his throne, Bowser pulled out a decorative box with a shiny red button on top. “When you see Mowzer, tell him the Bob-OOM hadn't been a total failure.” Leaning over to Sombra, he held the detonator in front of his muzzle. “Go ahead, you do the honors.”
“What? No, this is your specta—”
“Naw, you do it.” Bowser waggled the detonator tantalizingly. “You’re the guest, after all.”
Sombra sighed before raising a hoof and pressing the button. At the base of the wooden post, a shower of sparks and smoke fired into the ground, shaking it before it rocketed up into the sky. A trailing scream of “I’ve always respected youuuuu” marked its ascent before ending in a literal bang, an image of Bowser making a victory sign spreading across the air upon detonation. Waves of “ooohs” and applause went up from the crowd at the midday fireworks, just as Bowser stood from his seat and looked down on his subjects.
“Now back to training, all of ya, or you’re joining him for slacking off!” Immediately the crowd dispersed and filled up the rest of the training field to resume, well, training. Planting his claws to his sides, Bowser looked to Sombra with a smug grin. “That’s how ya keep ‘em in line: intimidation through entertainment. ‘Two birds with one stone’ at its most excellent execution.”
“More comical than intimidating in my opinion,” Sombra dismissed.
“Baaaah, what do you know? Anyway, let’s move on to the next activity.”
“There’s more?”
“Well, duh! It’d be a pretty lame day if we just ended there. Nope, we move on!” Bowser stomped out of the booth and back into the castle with Sombra following, a little less begrudgingly than before. Back in the wide hallway from earlier, the two headed to the other end, where a door to the training field awaited. Outside on the dirt, Sombra could see various groups of soldiers performing different exercises and routines, and a fair number of them running around the field through an obstacle course that he swore hadn’t been there a minute ago.
“Considering the devastation made by my Shadow Bomb, I’m amazed you have this many soldiers around,” Sombra commented.
“Years of repeated failures have taught me to always keep a back-up force and around-the-clock recruitment and training,” Bowser said. “No matter the losses, there’ll be more pumped out to fill in the gaps. Victory through sheer numbers, baby. Bwahahaha!”
Bowser escorted Sombra along the edge of the field, belting out “motivators” to his troops.
“Keep in time you maggots! Watch those rows! No pain no gain, ya nancies! Those are barely half your weight, sissy! Harder you weaklings!”
A Boomerang Bro approached the towering king, snapping a salute upon stopping. “Are the recruits to your liking, Sir?”
“If by liking you mean utter disappointment then you’d be correct, Sergeant!” Bowser balked. “I’m starting to feel you’re losing your edge in honing these pansies into hardened killing machines. From where I’m standing, they wouldn’t even survive past the first level!”
“Aye Aye! I’m on it, Sir!” The Boomerang Bro snapped off another salute before running back to the troops, where he then began “encouraging” them with repeated throwings of his boomerang at their backsides.
“It’s all in the discipline, Sombie. Bet ya never thought I’d have things so in control, huh?” Bowser made a sly, yet monstrous grin.
“You do seem to run a tight ship,” Sombra admitted as he and Bowser walked on. “This day has been nothing but surprises.”
Bowser stopped abruptly when he came in sight of a number of red-shelled troopas struggling to jog over some crossbars. “What do you think you’re doing? This isn’t a Sunday stroll; why aren’t you keeping the pace?”
“Too... exhausted...” one of the troopas moaned as his head kept bobbing in accordance to his steps and breathlessness.
“Exhausted?! What you are is fat! You wouldn’t be hurting if you’d just lay off the snacks, cream puff! And what’s the rest of your excuses?”
“What’s the... point? We just... walk back and... forth in a single... spot, all day,” another troopa breathed out.
“Is that back-talk I hear, soldier?! You better get your attitude straight or I’ll straighten it by planting my big foot somewhere reeeal unpleasant!”
The troopas didn’t speed up in the slightest, making Bowser stomp the ground and growl with impatience. Sombra, on the other hand, merely took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his horn glowing a bright red. The air grew heavy and everything darkened, making everyone either slow down or stop to look anxiously at the sudden dimness. Things got especially dark around the lagging troopas as a black cloud billowed up behind them, forming into three towering hellspawn that grew red eyes and fangs and claws that sought to snatch some tender turtle prey with blood-curdling screeches. The troopas gave their own yells in return before zipping off blindly, barreling through their leading comrades and gaining a 1-up at hyper speed. The smoke monsters withered and evaporated, bringing light levels to normal as Bowser looked over to a smiling Sombra.
“I find fear goes a long way in instilling discipline; far more effective than threat of physical harm. Based from my experience,” he said, with an air of smugness.
“Hrrmm... and no need for me to yell,” Bowser pondered before snapping his claws. “Right, I’ll add it to the training regiment. My vocal chords owe you thanks!”
“Well, somebody has to pick up your slack, so it might as well be an expert.”
“Hnnn. I’ll let that slide since you’re not used to me showing gratitude.” Bowser turned around and headed for the door from whence they came. “That’s enough showing of the man-power. Now we move on to the actual strategizing.” Wondering what he meant by that, Sombra followed along back indoors.
Not far from the training area, koopa and stallion stepped into what looked to be a war room, with a large round table in the center covered with maps and checklists and a number of minions taking notes and tacking sheets of data on the walls.
“Alright nameless extras, scram!” Bowser announced. “Your astoundingly suave leader needs some thinking time alone.” Without objection, the minions shrugged and left in an orderly procession out another door. The room to themselves, Bowser stomped up to the table and waited for Sombra to join, who did so with some curiosity.
“These are where my biggest plans are worked on, refined and executed,” Bowser explained. “Assaults, blitzes, and more recently: invasions.” Sombra looked over the table and saw that it was mostly covered by a large, crudely drawn picture of Peach’s Castle and the surrounding buildings of Toad Town. Actually, crudely drawn may have been too harsh: it was perfectly average for an aspiring first-grader artist. All over the picture were arrows and lines and notes for attack patterns, flanking maneuvers, item box drop sites, and a few doodles of Bowser laying waste and standing atop two X-eyed Mario brothers while wearing a crown. Sombra had an idea of who designed the map.
“This was supposed to be the end result of a months-long planned invasion that a certain nosy horse decided to totally wreck,” Bowser resumed. “This is how it would’ve went down if it had gone accordingly.” For the next bit of speech the koopa pointed to parts of the map. “Ground troops would storm into the town, tearing up the place and causing mass hysteria, with para-troopas raining mayhem from the air. Meanwhile, my heavy hitters come in from the side here to attack the castle gates. While the guards are distracted, my stealth units would come in from the back here, sneak in, eliminate resistance on the inside and open the doors.
“By that time, the town would have been completely occupied, as well as the area surrounding the castle. At that point, I swoop on down, scare a few Toads, and bust into the throne room of the castle with my team of elite shock troopers. The only factor unaccounted for will be Peach’s personal guard, by which I mean Mario and his lackluster sibling, but considering I would have taken everything else by then, resistance would just be futile on their part. Run or fight, it won’t make a difference; I will have finally won completely! Gwuhahahaha!”
Bowser’s stint of dramatically evil laughter came off as blase to Sombra, but then again, the effect had long worn off after seeing him do it for the thirtieth time. However, it didn’t detract from the soundness of Bowser’s simple strategy.
“For something like this to happen, it would take massive numbers,” Sombra noted.
“Which I had, until a certain someone—whom I won’t name—botched it. But in a few months, there’ll be enough troops to give it another go.”
“Actually, it may not have to be that long.” Sombra rose up and planted his front hooves onto the table to get a better look. “I noticed there’s no artillery implemented into this attack.”
“Naw, I haven’t thought of that. Figured I could scare the wits outta them with a giant mass of blood-thirsty minions looking to pillage and take names. Though some added firepower wouldn’t hurt, I suppose.”
“Indeed it wouldn’t, plus it would create a whole other approach.” Sombra tapped his hoof on one part of the map. “Rather than have your men storm the castle gates, you could position your artillery here and bombard it from a distance. You could also fire upon the castle if you wanted to, as it seems to suffer a crippling lack of high walls. But if you want to preserve the castle—say as a trophy piece—then you could use them to support troops in the town.”
“Yeah... Yeah! I could blow open the gates so my heavies won’t be tuckered out by the time they get to the front door! Just roll some tanks in and fire away, maybe even send in a few to flatten some houses for some extra shock and awe. And they’d provide great shelter for my last ditch end game bomb!”
“Err, are you sure you want to put a high explosive near any of your forces, much less your heavy weaponry? After the last... two times, wouldn’t you want it put elsewhere? Or perhaps, nowhere at all, given your fortune?”
“I have to have my back-up boomer, otherwise my retreat would look all the more shameful. But you have a point; I’ll make a note to put it someplace faaaaaar away, and have it airlifted by some Fly Guys. But wait, then if there were Yoshis they’d be an easy target. Hmmmm...”
“Alternatively, if you insist on using an ‘end game bomb’, you could just have it delivered by a long-range firing mechanism well after your forces have left the area. It will give the enemy a false sense of victory and relief, making them oblivious to utter annihilation.”
“Whoa, that’s demented. I like it!” Bowser grabbed a nearby crayon and scribbled something onto the map. “Gotta get these notes down. Ar-till-ery... Bomb-launched-from-dis-tance... And you know what, I have just the thing for that: a really freakin’ big cannon built right into the castle! Gonna have to do some maintenance; I’ve barely used the darn thing. But that can totally work! Hmm, and maybe have it done when it’s dark out so they won’t see us coming until it’s too late! Bwuhahaha, so ingenious.”
Bowser stopped scribbling a moment and looked straight at Sombra. “Hold on, why are you telling me this stuff? Kinda goes against the bad guy code of not helping rivals.”
“Bad guy or not, as a proper strategist, I know when to commend a decent attack strategy. Which, by some profoundly astronomical serendipity, you managed to produce.” Sombra got down from the table. “That said, I find some moderate joy in making small improvements to such plans, as a sort of reward to the planner for not making me slap my hoof to my face. And it’s not like I’ll be utilizing these strategies any time soon, thanks to another individual who shall not be named.”
“Huh, sounds like we have the same annoying meddler. Hahahahahaha!” Sombra lifted his eyebrows, part dismissively and part amusedly. Bowser continued, “Just kidding. But hey, didn’t think today would be so productive, as well as entertaining!” The scaly tyrant clapped his claws together. “I dunno bout you, but all this brainstorming and host stuff has got me hungry. Let us adjourn to the dining room and get some grub. Bet ya didn’t think I could say fancy words too, huh?”
“Color me even more surprised,” Sombra said flatly.
“Yeah, you could use some color. Maybe afterwards we can go sunning on the roof, have some cold brews and take in the scenery. It’ll be like the beach, only much cooler cuz it’s happening at my place.”
“I think I’ll pass...”
“Yeah; food first, then we agree on the next activity. Man, I never doubted my hosting abilities, but this has been easy!”
As Bowser and Sombra left the room, a curious train of thought went through the unicorn’s mind. Despite being in the ignoramus dinosaur’s presence for several hours, nothing considerably bad had occurred, and had all been rather pleasant by moron-interaction standards. Why, his host even came off as... tolerable. Not only that, but there was actually a glimmer of a somewhat intelligent, or at least clever individual beneath the mass of fat and muscle.
A startling admission to be sure, but it comforted Sombra in a way. And given how well the first night went, this temporary stay of residence may not be as bad as he originally thought.