Story blog for a Super Mario AU. It felt from the sky. The weapon that finally gave Bowser the Mushroom Kingdom. The Superstar of the Mushroom Kingdom has fallen. Its princess has fled. But though she has lost everything, the princess has been left with a gift: a daughter. Her name is Stella, and she knows that the Kingdom is rightfully hers.
Bowser Jr. had not been pleased when he’d been told Kamek was too busy to see him.
“Tell him he’s not busy anymore!” he’d barked. “This is urgent!”
Since his childhood, Bowser Jr. had more than doubled in height. The Koopa trembling before him was reminded vividly of the old king in his prime.
Still, his fear could not change his answer.
“I-I’m terrible s-sorry, Your Surliness, but Kamek gave us strict orders not to interrupt him for any reaso-”
He hadn’t even finished before Bowser Jr. rose to his feet with a snarl of irritation. The Koopa yelped and ducked into his shell, but the shell only bounced and clattered harmlessly against the floor as the infuriated king strode past him.
Junior knew there was only one line of work that would keep Kamek from seeing him, but he was determined not to let his old caretaker escape. The castle was as imposing and hollow as the pipes of an organ, and many of the souls living there heard the reverberating booms and crashes of their king’s progress down the twisting castle steps.
Junior burst through the doors to the basement lab, and squinted against the flickering solar flare he found there. The mass of incandescent orange and yellow lights flashed with a brilliance that tore through the eyes like butter and seared the tissue of the brain.
Silhouetted below this agonizing light show, a small cutout in black threatening to be drowned out by the dancing aurora behind it, was Kamek. The round, black goggles over his eyes held a double image of the dancing beam as he flicked his wand and gestured his hand in an arcane pattern of commanding loops. The magic circle on the ground turned steadily on the floor before him, each facet of the ring sending forth a magic chain to wrap tightly around the outraged light. The tightly-wound chains warped the shape of the light until it no longer even remotely resembled a star, just a rod of crumbled, warbling energy.
It was these chains, this circle, that kept the Havoc Star contained.
The Star, as always, emitted a high-pitched wailing that pierced through the eardrums like a dentist drill, but even so, Junior’s booming voice was able to cleave through the noise.
“Kamek! I need to speak with you!” he roared.
Kamek turned, indignant.
“Your Majesty, this is a very delicate operation!” he screeched at the top of his voice. “Wait outside!”
“NOW, KAMEK!”
Kamek frowned. Even over the earsplitting noise, he recognized that tone. He had heard it for decades from Junior’s father, and he had heard it for decades from Junior himself. Kamek feared Bowser Jr. no more or less than he had when his ward was smaller than himself, but he knew no amount of reason, wisdom, or basic fact could prevail over that tone. It was a commanding voice accustomed to shaping reality.
Kamek flicked his wand, and a bubble crisscrossed with geometric shapes enveloped the chained Havoc Star. The siren-like wailing was abruptly choked off and the flickering glare dampened by the slowly turning bubble.
Kamek lifted up his goggles with an unimpressed look and fished his glasses out of his robe. “I suppose if not blowing this castle sky-high is so unimportant to you, I can spare a few minutes,” he said dryly.
“Can the sass!” snapped Junior, “I need to ask you something.”
“Well, what is it?”
Junior stepped further into the room. The ceiling entered Kamek’s range of vision as he looked up to meet his gaze.
“Do you remember when I was a kid, I asked you if dad was a bad person?”
Behind his glasses, Kamek’s eyes narrowed. He had not been expecting this, but he wasn’t surprised, either.
“Yes, what of it?” he said.
Bowser Jr.’s voice was stern. “You never gave me an answer,” he said.
Kamek huffed. “As I recall, Your Majesty, I told you you would have to determine the answer for yourself.”
“Like I said, you never gave me an answer.”
Kamek snarled in irritation. “It wasn’t my place to judge your father’s actions.”
“I’m asking you to,” snapped Junior. “So answer.”
Kamek threw his arms out. “What, you can’t make up your own opinion? You need me to figure it out for you?
“Will you stop DANCING AROUND IT?” With a roar, Bowser Jr. slammed his fist into the lined shelves of glass bottles. Shards of sopping glass spun over the floor. Kamek felt a familiar cold shill race under his shell, and he shrank down.
“The entire world hates us, Kamek!” Junior thundered. “The entire world! They call us monsters! People are killing themselves to get rid of us! You don’t do that for things that are good! Do you?”
Kamek bristled. “Well, you seem to have made up your mind, so I don’t see the point of asking me.”
“The point is you lied to me!” Junior roared. “All the time I was a kid, you made me think we were doing something right!”
“When did we lie to you?” Kamek spat. “When? When we told you we hated Mario? That was the truth! When we told you we wanted the Mushroom Kingdom? That was the truth! What part of what we said was a lie?”
Junior faltered. He had been so full of righteous fury as he’d thundered down the steps, so sure that he had been wronged. He knew he had been deceived, but upon Kamek’s words, he inexplicably found himself put on the spot. He floundered, groping through his memory for anything definite, anything unmistakably duplicitous.
“He... He told me Peach was my mother,” was all he could manage.
Kamek snorted. “Even as a child, you didn’t believe that! Are you honestly telling me that little white lie is why you barged in here? You can’t fool me! This is about that girl, isn’t it?”
Bowser Jr. felt suddenly as though the front of his shell had been ripped open, exposing something raw and quivering underneath.
“She... She has nothing to do with this!” he yelled, and he couldn’t stop the shaking in his voice.
Kamek snorted again. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I know exactly what’s going on here. You were content to sit on the throne your father won for years, and then all the sudden that girl appears and flashes you that arrogant smile and you want to throw it all away!”
“It isn’t like that!” Junior felt his cheeks burning with a heat that had nothing to do with the captive star or the embers popping in his own throat.
“Now who’s dancing around it?” Kamek knew there was a decent chance he would pay for these words later, but he had seen the troubling signs of interest in the young king, and he knew them all too well.
“Your father spent years running himself ragged for one woman! He hasn’t even glimpsed her face for years, and the thought of her still haunts him! Do you want that to happen to you? You think that girl will ever accept you, stand with you at an altar with a bouquet in her hand? Give me a break! It’s a fool’s errand! It always was! You can’t win her! Crush her, throw her away, and forget her! It’s for your own good!”
In his mind’s eye, Junior saw her. The girl with the wild, brown ponytail. The girl with the bold brows and flashing blue eyes underneath the brim of her pink cap. The girl who’d once said to him, “You are standing in between me and my throne.” Then she’d said, “I’ll be a better kind of ruler. That’s why I don’t want you to get hurt.”
And then, she had said: “You deserve to be free, too, Junior.”
“I... She’s not... We don’t...”
“Very well!” Kamek shrieked. “If she really means that much to you, then by all means, run away with her! Bend down on one knee, offer her a ring, leave all this, your castle, your subjects, your family, leave it all behind! Abandon your father and tear down the home he built for you! Everything else has abandoned your father, why shouldn’t you?”
Junior winced. He couldn’t help it. “I never said I was going anywhere!”
“Of course you’re not! Because you’re not an idiot!” Kamek thudded the bottom of his staff against the cavernous floor. “You ask me about right and wrong, good and bad? You’re not a little boy anymore. You should know by now that there is no distinction. Good and evil are just words to dress up ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Tell me, do you truly feel it’s ‘right’ or ‘good’ to turn against your family?”
Junior looked away. He thought of his aged father, ailing, bitter, consumed with obsession and rage. “Torch that little brat!” he’d roared. The “little brat” who fought so ferociously and, every once in a while, smiled at him so kindly.
It was true. He wasn’t a little boy anymore. It had been a long time since he’d thought of Peach as his “Mama.” It had been a long time since he’d thought of Mario as a “bad man.”
But his father was still his father. And his father was alone.
A low, rumbling snarl poured out between Junior’s teeth as he abruptly turned to pound back up the stairs. Kamek blew out the huge breath he had been holding in and flipped his goggles back into place.
Doubt was a new thing. His father had never wrestled with doubt. Kamek was too old, too set in his ways to change course. He hoped he had convinced Lord Junior the same, but he was not fool enough to believe it. He knew better than anyone of the obstinacy of the young.
Junior, for his part, found himself stopping partway up the third staircase. He knew he couldn’t abandon his father. But forget her? He might as well try to detach his own arm. Every time he saw her face or heard her voice, he would think of the sad look in her eyes when he’d...when he’d offered her the kingdom.
“We could rule together! It doesn’t have to be like this! I’ll take care of you, Stella!”
Did Kamek know about that? Did he know that he had already tried the “idiotic” thing Kamek had railed against? Perhaps, by turning him down, she had proven herself to be less idiotic than him.
“That won’t work, Junior. Don’t you see that?”
He could never kill her. But if she had made up her mind to fight, then he would just have to beat her. He would thrash her so painfully, so completely, that she would retreat and never return. It was her only chance.
For a moment, he imagined a scene from a different world. Mario was alive. Junior was still a kid. The stands surrounding the tennis court were filled with cheers and banners. And Princess Peach, still lovely with her golden hair that tumbled below her waist, pulled forth a squinting, brown-haired toddler as she smiled down at him patiently.
“Junior,” she would have said, “this is my daughter, Stella. I hope you two can play nice, at least for today.”
Junior shook his head and pulled himself further up the stairs. That had never happened. Don’t torture yourself. You know the way things have to be.
For the remainder of the day and all through the night, the castle was quiet.
What did Luigi feel in the face of his approaching execution?
A lot of jumbled-up things, most of them seemingly incompatible with each other.
See, Luigi had no intention of saving himself by giving up Peach’s location to Bowser.
After being captured for what seemed to be the final time, he looked over the course of his heroing career and saw nothing but failure.
He hadn’t been able to save the Mushroom Kingdom or Mario.
He’d rescued many Toads from Bowser’s tyranny, but there were so many more left behind.
And even the ones who had been saved were now living in exile.
Luigi, in some twisted way, saw himself dying to save Peach and Stella as a redemption,
A redemption it never occurred to him he didn’t need.
His silence was the one thing he still had left to him.
If he could keep his silence, his niece and her mother would be safe.
Well, he wanted to think like that,
But when he thought of his family, not just Stella and Peach but Daisy and his own children,
He nearly broke.
He didn’t want to leave them. He wanted to stay with them.
Each time he tried to reconcile himself to his “sacrifice,” their faces appeared in his head, and he railed against the deep unfairness of it all.
Little did he know,
His niece had no intention of letting her uncle die.
Stella emerged from the warp pipe hidden in an empty mine where Bowser’s forces wouldn’t think to look.
This was the first time she had set foot in the Mushroom Kingdom since she was sixteen, and the first time she had ever done so alone.
She was in awe as she traversed the country she still thought of as her birthright.
“This rock is mine. This tree is mine. That horizon is mine.”
Of course, that’s not how royalty or property works, and to some extent, Stella knew this,
But she was also young and mentally overwhelmed.
She looked over the terrain the way a farmer would survey the untamed patch of wilderness they had just purchased,
Seeing both what was there and what would be underneath once every obstacle was cleared away. A sort of greedy double-vision.
But, of course, Stella had a job to do.
Luigi’s execution was in six days. She had to make her way to the site of the old castle and interrupt it somehow.
She didn’t really have a plan,
And the Mushroom Kingdom had become an unwelcoming place.
Everything about the country had changed, even its name.
It was called “New Bowser Kingdom” now.
Much of the old cities had become industrialized, and new towns had sprung up surrounding ember-spewing weapon factories.
The sky was choked with pollution, and the air filled with the metallic clang of hammers.
Toads had been reduced to second-class citizens who toiled in dangerous and thankless jobs.
And, while many were still secretly loyal to Princess Peach and dreamt of the day when she would return,
Others were consumed by bitterness, thinking that Peach had abandoned them.
Many of them had lost their last shred of hope in the wake of Luigi’s upcoming execution.
Stella was deeply saddened as she moved through these sad, soot-filled cities.
These were her people. They needed her.
But she had no idea how to help them.
For the first time, she understood something of the full weight of what her mother and uncle were up against.
Now, naturally, a human girl in the isolationist New Bowser Kingdom was bound to attract attention,
And if anyone discovered she was Princess Peach’s daughter, that could jeopardize her rescue mission.
But, Stella had a cover story.
She told any Toad to whom she showed her face that she was a reporter from the Metro Kingdom.
She had come to see if living conditions in New Bowser Kingdom were truly as inhumane as the rumors claimed.
When people heard she was a reporter, they became eager to talk to her.
They all seemed to have something they wanted her to say to the outside world.
Some felt it was important to communicate how bad living conditions really were.
They told Stella of overly long hours, low pay, strict rationing in winter, merciless fatigue in summer, how a coworker had fallen into a smelting vat and the smell had lingered for weeks.
Others had loved ones who had already escaped or that they had simply lost track of.
They urged Stella to send out inquiries and give names.
“It’s me, Todd. I’m still alive. I miss you.
“Publish that for me, will you? Maybe she’ll see it.”
Still others had messages they wished to convey to Princess Peach.
“Long live the princess!”
“This kingdom is still yours, Princess! It will always be yours!”
“We’re fighting for you, Princess Peach! We know you’ll come back one day!”
It was this last group that hit Stella the hardest.
She found her eyes welling up with tears as she heard those earnest words, pledges of loyalty to her mother.
The Toads were taken aback by her tears.
“It’s just very moving how much you care for your princess,” she managed to choke out.
The Toads came to see her as a living bottle, carrying all their messages. They wanted to protect their messages,
And so they tried to protect her.
Stella found people willing to hide her in their homes, people willing to share their food.
Still, there were a few close calls.
Stella found herself unable to stand back and watch as an overworked Toad was disciplined by a Hammer Bro. for passing out in the street,
So she jumped in and fought the Hammer Bro. off.
She knew it was probably a mistake, but the testimonies of the Toads had left her so riled up, she felt she would explode if she didn’t do something.
She’d had to retreat before reinforcements appeared by crawling into the sewer.
It was there, sloshing through who-knows-what in the dark,
That she discovered her uncle had not been the only one fighting for the kingdom’s freedom.
As previously stated, Luigi had been very hush-hush about his rescue work in New Bowser Kingdom. There were many aspects that he had never told Stella about.
That included his allies.
Stella found herself confronted with a cluster of very dirty, very fierce looking Toads.
They were the remains of the Toad Brigade.
No longer an exploration team, they now served as the major resistance organization in New Bowser Kingdom.
In the intervening years, Captain Toad had changed from a wide-eyed idealist into someone much more jaded and cynical.
Stella, overjoyed at having found a real resistance, confided in him her real goal of rescuing Luigi.
Captain Toad told her she was out of her mind.
Luigi was already dead. They couldn’t count on Mario, and they can’t count on Luigi.
They had a hard enough time keeping their numbers up as it is. Risking the entire Toad Brigade to rescue Luigi was a foolish gamble.
They had already seen so many brave souls fall.
He didn’t even want to mention what had happened to Toadette.
Before Stella even had time to ask, “Who’s Toadette?” Captain Toad had already turned away.
“Forget him. Head home. Nobody asked you to meddle in our business.”
The Toad Brigade had been tracking Stella, but they didn’t know who she was, and they were not impressed by what they saw as her feeble efforts to be a hero.
Stella had no choice but to play her final card.
She opened the backpack she had been carrying and pulled out a hat.
It was a plumber’s hat, much like her father’s and uncle’s. It was in pink with an “S” above the brim.
She put it on and told Captain Toad to look at her.
He did.
He huffed.
“That stupid cosplay isn’t going to change my mind.”
“It’s not cosplay,” said Stella.
“Look in my eyes.
“Don’t you know who I am?”
Captain Toad looked.
He blinked.
He couldn’t look away.
Stella’s eyes looked exactly like Peach’s.
And that determined expression underneath that hat...
“Princess Peach...the hero you called Mario...
“They’re not strangers to me, either.
“I already lost my dad. I don’t want to lose my uncle.
“I know you think we failed you, but I promise it will change.”
In spite of himself, Captain Toad was in tears.
“Has it really been that long?
“Is she really a mother now?”
“Please, help me!” said Stella.
But, Captain Toad shook his head.
“Go home. Go back to your mother.
“Do you think we want to lose you, too?”
But, Stella was tired of being protected, tired of being told it was enough just to live.
She had never felt more strongly that she had so much more to offer than her continued survival.
“If you don’t come with me to save Zio, I’m going alone.”
Looking at her blazing blue eyes, Captain Toad saw Mario.
Luigi’s deepest and most desperate wish was to keep his niece safe.
So, when she agreed to give up adventuring and remain in hiding indefinitely,
It was a huge load off his shoulders.
But there was one fact that Luigi couldn’t change through tears or pleading:
Luigi was now in his forties,
And as much as he tried to hide it,
The truth was Mr. L was slowing down.
It happened during a mission seemingly no different from any other.
Luigi, as Mr. L, broke into a weapon factory in the conquered Mushroom Kingdom to free the Toads enslaved there and help them escape to another country.
But, he miscalculated a jump over a spiked shell spinning his way
And fell on his shoulder.
In his younger days, perhaps he would have been able to quickly recover from such a slip-up,
But the jolt of pain he felt now was enough to leave his gasping.
The Koopa Troop used his moment of vulnerability to capture him.
Bowser’s forces were excited.
Though Mr. L had never been the powerhouse Mario had been, he had been a thorn in the side of Bowser’s empire now for many years.
When they informed Bowser that they had captured Mr. L, Bowser flew into the kingdom to unmask Mr. L personally.
Years of grief had aged Luigi, but without his mask, Bowser recognized him with a satisfied smirk.
Luigi, for his part, had been careful to avoid directly confronting Bowser all this time
And was shocked by how he had changed.
Bowser had not aged gracefully.
His once muscular, imposing frame seemed to have been shriveled and curled over itself, like a fruit piece left to dry in the sun.
But his emaciated appearance made him no less frightening.
Quite the opposite, actually.
Bowser had traded in his bombastic demeanor for something slier, more predatory.
He was less a dragon and more a serpent.
Was this change also due to Mario’s passing?
As long as Mario was alive and Peach was within reach, there had been a net to prevent Bowser from sliding into full monstrosity.
But, after eighteen years with no Mario, no Peach,
Bowser’s remaining scruples had slowly peeled away.
He’d been aware of what was happening to him,
But he didn’t know how to stop the twisting of his own heart,
And he finally gave up trying.
“If I’ve already killed Mario, I might as well keep going.
“There’s no stopping this now.”
Such were his thoughts.
Bowser now had Luigi, the prince consort of Sarasaland.
Bowser contacted the king of Sarasaland,
Daisy’s father,
And told him his intentions.
Luigi would be publicly executed on the spot where Peach’s Castle had once stood in one week,
Unless either Sarasaland or Luigi himself told him exactly where to find Peach.
If Sarasland made a move to rescue Luigi from his capture,
Bowser would take that as a declaration of war
And unleash the full power of the Havoc Star on all four kingdoms of Sarasaland.
Bowser’s announcement threw the Sarasaland government into an uproar.
Daisy pleaded with her father to launch the military for a rescue.
Wasn’t Bowser’s execution of her husband a declaration of war in itself?
But Daisy’s father wouldn’t budge.
He did love Luigi and didn’t want to leave his grandchildren without a father,
But he loved his country more.
The Havoc Star had to potential to wipe Sarasaland off the face of the earth.
Meanwhile,
News of Luigi’s capture reached Peach and Stella.
Like Daisy, Peach and her daughter were gripped with fear.
Peach regarded Luigi as one of her dearest friends,
And Luigi was the closest thing to a father Stella had ever had.
Stella spent a restless night wrestling with the promise she had made to Luigi.
She would stay in Sarasaland with her mother. She would stay safe.
That’s what she had promised him.
But if nothing was done, she would lose Luigi, her zio.
And she remembered the stories she had heard of her father, who’d risked his life again and again to save the country and his loved ones before paying the ultimate price.
Luigi may have been willing to trade his life for Stella’s,
But she was not.
She told her mother where she was going, not knowing whether her mother would try to stop her.
Peach was deeply grieved as she looked at her daughter.
In truth, she had always known this day would come.
Stella was too much like her father, too much like her mother, to be satisfied with her life of idly safety.
Furthermore, Stella was eighteen years old.
She couldn’t spend her whole life hiding away from the world.
Peach said only this:
“If you go, you need to understand that there’s a very large change you will never come back.”
She said this solemnly.
Stella said she understood.
Peach held her close for what she feared would be the last time.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, and she meant it.
Peach prepared Stella the best she could for the journey.
Many years had passed, but the kingdom was still mapped clearly in her memory.
She showed Stella the route Mr. L had taken to sneak over the border and gave her detailed directions and instructions.
Luigi, in an attempt to starve his niece’s wanderlust,
Had deliberately hid details about the current state of the Mushroom Kingdom from her,
But Peach had been able to learn more from Luigi and Daisy about how the cities, terrain, and people had changed.
The last thing she said before Stella left was,
“If you can’t save him, I want you to come home anyway.
“No one will blame you.”
Stella reassured her mother that she would definitely return and with Luigi in tow.
After rescuing Luigi from Bowser's clutches, Daisy is forced to give Luigi the terrible news: Mario has not survived Bowser's takeover of the Mushroom Kingdom. Luigi can't bear to face the empty nights of grief alone, and so he asks Daisy to spend the night with him. She agrees, but the nights are long, and the end of his pain seems nowhere in sight. Part of the Fallen Star AU.
((Now that this AU officially has its own blog, let’s kick things off with a one-shot!))
((A lot of this story was based on my own experiences with grief, insomnia, and depression. There were many more nights than the ones recounted in this story. Many, many more.))
Never actually drawn this boy before. I think I like how it turned out...
Tony is Luigi and Daisy’s oldest kid and their only boy. He’s two years younger than Stella, which makes him 16 during the main events of Fallen Star. Tall, lanky, and constantly knocking into things, Tony learned at a young age to cover up his insecurities with a joking personality. He’s very much the class clown of the group. Despite his efforts to appear jovial, however, he has a surprisingly short fuse. Stella’s thirst for adventure and overall recklessness often leave him exasperated. He is in many ways his father’s son.
For all his jangled nerves, he has a surprisingly mature side. He’s a wonderful big brother to his two younger sisters. Like Stella, he grew up in an atmosphere of grief over Mario’s absence, and he’s learned to put his own feelings aside in order to comfort or listen to others.
However, because he prioritizes other people’s feelings over his own, he shies away from confiding in people himself. This has caused his family to unwittingly neglect his emotional needs, since they assume he’s fine.
He’s not fine. Ever since he was younger, he’d noticed that his father and his cousin shared a bond unique to them. They were united in their grief for Mario; Luigi ached for his brother everyday and Stella desperately wished for the father she’d never known. Tony, conversely, only viewed Mario with a kind of awed bewilderment. He didn’t particularly miss Mario, he only knew that “Mario” was someone that made his parents sad and drew his father toward Stella, away from him. As he grew older, Tony began to resent how much everyone talked about Mario, how obsessed with him they all seemed to be. Was it possible that Luigi preferred Stella, Mario’s precious daughter, over him?
Luigi’s sorrow made Tony feel guilt over his resentment. And as Stella was confined in her house, in hiding from the world, Tony knew it wasn’t fair to blame her either. After all, he knew how much Stella valued his friendship. So, he blamed Mario instead. He blamed Mario for dying, for leaving his family behind, for failing when everyone had been counting on him to save the Mushroom Kingdom. In truth, Tony knew he was being childish, that blaming someone for dying was pathetic. Surely, his father would be horrified if he knew. But, Mario was dead. Theoretically, no one would get hurt if he kept blaming him secretly.
Theoretically.
Other Notes:
He’s not yet old enough to grow a proper mustache, so he chooses to shave. Luigi is scandalized.
He’s openly gay. When he met Peasley for the first time, Stella had to remind him to close his mouth.
When he was very young and Sarasaland royalty was preparing for a formal party, he insisted on wearing a pretty dress “like Mama’s.” Daisy was delighted with the idea and had one made for him. To this day, he still likes to wear dresses to parties.
Daisy jokes that he gets his girly streak from his dad.
He can jump higher than Stella, but he can’t float the way she can. Learning to land was a painful process.
His hair is auburn like his mother’s.
His youngest sister, Viola, basically uses him like a jungle gym. She’s constantly climbing on him, demanding that he carry her, shrieking with delight when tosses him in the air. Luckily, she’s only 4, so these games aren’t too difficult. Yet.
Marigold is Daisy and Luigi’s second kid and their oldest girl. She’s four years younger than Tony, which makes her 12 during the events of Fallen Star.
It was Daisy who came up with Marigold’s name. She wanted a kid to be named after a flower, like her. She chose Marigold not only because it was pretty but because it contained all the letters in the name “Mario.” She was pretty proud of herself for brainstorming that one.
Of all the kids, Marigold is the quietest. She learned to talk early but never said much, preferring to look at things and consider them rather than discuss them. She also showed an interest in tinkering. She would often dismantle her toys and try to put them back together. Once that became too easy, she started swiping appliances and taking them apart, too. Daisy and Luigi soon realized this habit wasn’t the result of idle curiosity, as they’d once thought, but real technical interest. They also discovered she could read way faster than anybody else in the family. She has a real knack for engineering that might even be at a genius level.
As such, Marigold is in the unfortunate position of not only being the brightest kid but also way more of an intellectual than either of her parents. Luigi came from a blue collar background, and Daisy has always had a hard time with reading, so they were both excited by the early signs of Marigold’s intelligence. Marigold, however, has never felt that she fully fits in with the family.
To make matters worse, Marigold’s withdrawn nature means she doesn’t really have any friends outside the family. She’s troubled by the notion that if not for her family, she’d never talk to anyone at all.
Other Notes:
When she was 8 years old, she was kidnapped by King Boo. Her family managed to rescue her but ever since, she’s had a keen interest in the supernatural.
Her hair is dark brown, like her father’s.
She hates it when people call her “Goldie.” She complains that it makes her sound “like a dog.”
“Listen. I don’t usually tell people things like this, but you seem like an understanding sort. So, I’ll fill you up with something juicy…
“I was born… differently from most people. When someone I knew went away, I thought only of what I could do now that they weren’t here. When someone fell and broke a bone, it only interested me if they managed to fall in a funny way. And when someone told me I did something wrong, I only resented all the noise they made.
“I wasn’t very old when I began to see I wasn’t normal. Because other people had a thing called “guilt.” Because other people had a thing called “sympathy.” Because other people had a thing called “love.” These things, these strange, alien words guided people through what they did, what they said, the faces they made. Everyone followed those invisible threads, and they resented me for not doing the same.
“I used to lay awake at night and fret like a dog at a closed door. Why couldn’t I see these same guidelines that were so obvious to everyone else? Was I blind? Was I stupid? Was I broken?
“But then, I came to realize I wasn’t any of those things. I was free. Those feelings everyone else carried around were holding them back! I could do what I wanted! Say what I wanted! Feel whatever I wanted! If someone disappeared, I wouldn’t waste precious time moping and boo-hooing over them, I could bounce right back! Like a spring under a clown that laughs at crying children! Oh, how good it feels to be free!
“Sometimes I would wonder, Why me? Why was I the only one who could think outside the box? But the Dark Prognosticus showed me my true destiny. I would use its power to erase all those sad worlds full of invisible chains and create a new perfect world where everyone was free like me! No more sorrow, no more childish attachment, no more restrictions and nonsensical rules! Everyone would be guided by logic, as I am. Ooh, what fun we’ll all have! Can you imagine? I feel so lucky to dream such a magical dream!
“And, when I’m in that new world, finally, everything will make sense at last.”
This is a character profile for Mario and Peach’s daughter Stella, the main character of the Fallen Star AU.
I’ve posted a picture of her before, but I’ve decided I like my original concept sketch of her a little better.
General History: Stella was born in Sarasaland less than a year following the collapse of the Mushroom Kingdom. As Peach’s only daughter, and thus the rightful heir to the Mushroom throne, Stella was raised in absolute secrecy in Sarasaland, lest Bowser’s forces should discover her existence. Peach knew that the child of Mario and herself would give hope to the Toad population now living in oppression under Bowser’s rule. However, this reasoning has led Luigi to accuse Peach of using Stella.
Let it be said that Peach never pressured Stella to follow in Mario’s footsteps. Stella chose that path on her own. At a young age, she chafed at her confined existence and longed to liberate the conquered kingdom and take her rightful place as princess.
As a teenager, she became aware of the toll such a quest would take on Luigi, who had always worried over her and might never recover if she died the same way her father did. But, at 18, her hand was forced, and she officially made her existence known to Bowser and his forces. She understands she’s risking more than her own life by fighting, but she believes the war with Bowser is bigger than herself and Luigi.
Stella spent most of her childhood in that same secluded cottage where she was born.
Her mother Peach, Toadsworth, and a small number of servants lived there with them.
All the staff in the house were sworn to secrecy. If Bowser ever learned that Peach and her daughter were living in Sarasaland, it could be trouble.
The world waited anxiously to see if Bowser would expand his empire outside the Mushroom Kingdom.
But, he didn’t.
The truth was, he had come in some way to fear the Havoc Star, the very entity that had given him his victory.
He was still unwilling to give it up, but he himself had barely survived that final attack on Peach’s Castle,
And it had killed Mario, something he had never been able to do and - he realized in the few moments of complete self-honesty - had never really wanted to do.
So, he kept it under tight lock and key, using it as a deterrent more than anything else.
But, his forces were still probing the depths of space for Peach.
But, though she grew up in safety, Stella became restless.
Her mother and the other adults around her frequently told her stories of Mario, her hero father, and how he’d saved the Mushroom Kingdom time and time again.
She learned, from an early age, that she was a princess whose rightful kingdom had been stolen from her by a monster named Bowser.
Unsurprisingly, she came to think of the faraway Mushroom Kingdom, a country she had never seen, as hers.
And, she came to idolize Mario, dreaming of becoming a great hero like him.
But, these noble dreams were deeply troublesome to Luigi.
At every waking moment, he was plagued by an all-consuming fear:
This is an AU I’ve been developing for a while. It’s basically my take on the stock “Bowser defeats Mario and conquers the Mushroom Kingdom” scenario. I haven’t decided if I want to do this as a fan fic, a series of fan fics, a comic series, whatever, so I decided I might as well lay out the basics here.
The name “Fallen Star” is a double entendre. The first meaning refers to the weapon Bowser uses to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom: a star that fell from the sky. The course of history in the Mario world is often determined by the presence of stars and other celestial bodies on Earth, the Power Stars, the Beanstar, the Dark Star, the Shine Sprites, the Cobalt Star, etc. All of these entities contain great power and great capacity to be used for either good or evil, but one star proved itself more devastating, more uncontrollable than all the others. This was the Havoc Star, which fell to Earth in a fiery blaze.
The Havoc Star crashed into the ocean, and the force of its impact was so great that it caused flooding in coastal cities around the world. Bowser’s forces found it smoldering in the sea depths, the water around it broiling to a white heat. They managed to contain it with Kamek’s magic and unleashed it as a weapon on the Mushroom Kingdom.
All stars are living beings, but this star seemed heedless of any attempts to communicate with it. It couldn’t be controlled or reasoned with, the only voice it had seemed to be a scream. Bowser didn’t see it as a sentient being and instead as an infinite energy source to be pointed in the general direction of a target.
The devastation this thing wreaked on the Mushroom Kingdom was total, and there was a lot of collateral damage even among Bowser’s own forces, as Kamek’s attempts to wrangle it relied a lot on trial and error. Even Bowser grew uneasy at the extent of its power, but he was far too prideful to admit to his fear and carried on laying waste to the Mushroom Kingdom.
Mario and Luigi had no way to fight this thing. They decided to focus their efforts on evacuating as many of the Toads out of the Kingdom as possible, hoping to buy time for the Star Sprites to find a solution. But, they are only two men, and the star was more powerful than both of them. Luigi is captured, and Mario and Peach are forced to go into hiding. Bowser takes the opportunity to install himself in the now vacant Peach Castle.
Alone together, Mario decides to make one final bid to stop Bowser. Peach will run for the border while Mario takes one last stand against Bowser.
And this is the second meaning of “Fallen Star” because Mario never returns from this encounter.
I’ve seen other people upload concepts of Mario and Peach’s kids. So, this one is mine yaaaaay!
Her name is Stella. She’s the oldest of the Mario Bros’ kids and also the one most determined to follow in their footsteps. She’s not even a plumber, she just dresses like that because she idolizes her father and uncle so much. Nonetheless, she is still a princess of the Mushroom Kingdom and wears her title proudly.
Bowser Jr. is basically her nemesis. The more things change.
Stella is the main character of an AU I’ve been developing called the “Fallen Star AU.” She doesn’t have any siblings. I might post more stuff about the AU if people are interested and probably even if they aren’t.
