Heavy Is the Crown- Chapter 1, "The Egg"

Greetings and salutations, friends and neighbors! As recently promised, I’m bringing you the start of a fanfiction presentation, slated to come out one chapter at a time on Fridays unless otherwise noted. I’m going to get us started down this curious road with a tale out of the lands of Nintendo, as we take a look at a different kind of origin story, for the notable franchise mainstay antagonist King Bowser, and see just how he became King of the Koopas. Enjoy!

Luther let his wife lean heavily on him as they trudged along the beach, the high tide a good twenty feet away on their left, washing the sands with a 'whoosh' as it went back out again. They grunted as they struggled along, keeping well away from the other couples coming along behind them, koopas all. They were the only green tribe koopas, bipedal turtle-folk who dwelled mostly within the lands of the Gora Empire. Of the colored tribes, red, blue, yellow and green, they were effectively the lowest caste, commoners deserving of little entitlement or respect.

Yet for the Great Birthing, which took place once every three years, all were as equals. Luther and Cassandra were the only green tribes bold enough to hop aboard the stretch kart with the reds who mostly comprised their neighborhood, though. The others had waited; Luther wondered how many would end up laying their eggs en route to the shores of Piko Lake.

Cassandra cried out, viciously clenching his shell just over his shoulder, the hardened carapace creaking from the pressure. "Take heart, woman! We're nearly there!"

"Oh, suck on a pirhana plant, you twit," she growled at him, the contraction passing. "If we don't stop soon, these eggs are coming on the move. This is fine." Luther quickly used his hands to dig out a depression in the sand, into which Cassandra stepped and squatted down. He then grabbed a blanket out of the bag he'd been carrying, which she wrapped around herself for the sake of some semblance of privacy. This was their first batch of children, so she didn't realize that nobody would be looking.

The next contraction came, and she pushed with all of her might, veins standing out on her throat and forehead. Luther let her crush his hands in hers, and with a grunt, she staggered, sighed, and smiled. "Luther, it's happened," she said wistfully. "It's over now. Let's see how many there are." She let him pull her up out of the laying pit, and as she came away with the blanket, they stared down together in disbelief at what had come from her. "Luther," she rasped, clutching his arm.

"Now, now, Cass, it's fine," he said, no strength in his voice. "It's just, not what we expected." As the tide rolled serenely to one side of them and the cries of other mothers laying their eggs filled the air, the scent of a long, warm summer day still redolent about them, they stared down at the lone, giant egg Cassandra had laid.

It was easily the size of three or four normal koopa eggs. Cassandra looked up into Luther's face and forced a tired smile. "Well, he'll be a big one."

As they walked back toward the group kart, Cassandra stumbling but held up by her mate, the red tribes began quickly reasserting their superior rank, passing them by with hardly a word spoken to the common greens. They were forced to wait until everyone else was situated on the flatbed of the kart before being allowed to sit down atop their baggage.

Cassandra tried not to complain, but she kept grunting and having to shift position as they jounced along back toward the village. "Will there be this much luggage when we return?"

"Possibly more," Luther said quietly. "The Doreans alone had five. Most of the others had two or three, a few had four. We might have to load onto the reserve bucka." He looked around at the red tribe koopas, pitched his voice lower, and said, "That's actually far more likely going to be the case."

They remained quiet until the kart pulled into the lot behind the magistrate's office building, all of the fathers getting up. "Do I wait here on the kart," Cassandra asked as Luther rose.

"Yes, just until I return. Wait here for me. We have to go give our numbers." He took a deep breath, and hopped off of the flatbed. The line formed quickly as the fathers shuffled into the rear entrance of the building, and Cassandra watched, ire rising as her husband was systematically pushed, pulled and jostled to the back.

She lay back on the bags and thought about how they had gotten here. For seven years they hadn't been able to conceive, growing more desperate with each passing year. Finally, at thirty-five years old, Luther had decided he wanted to do whatever was necessary to make it happen.

The couple had traveled far to the north, into Hyrule Kingdom, in search of a famed sorceror named Gannondorf. Local legend had it that he had access to all manner of taboo magical powers, and many told of his miraculous potions and tinctures. It was said he even had an elixir which would guarantee a would-be mother could bring a child to term. Hearing this, the koopa couple embarked on a journey she hardly recalled.

There had been a lot of running, hiding, and fighting their way clear of strange land-squid creatures that spat some kind of rocks from tube shaped snouts. Luther had brought enough fire flowers for them to hang onto and use for self-defense, allowing them to survive largely unscathed.

The only other thing Cassandra remembered vividly was Gannondorf himself. A large, brooding figure in dark brown robes, his gray flesh emanating a cold, calculated malice and hatred. His hawkish nose poked out from under his hood as he sat across from them in a cave, four animated, armed skeletons keeping guard around a heavy wooden trunk. And the smell of him, she thought idly, the smell of him was dust and foul meat.

Gannondorf had gladly given them an elixir to aid in catching pregnant, asking only for one hundred coins in exchange. Before handing over the bottle, he asked them, "What sort of child do you want? With my enchantments, you may make them be whatever you desire. You each may chose one attribute to give him or her, but be warned; all things come with a balancing weight."

Luther had asked that his child be strong. Cassandra had requested the child be intelligent. Gannondorf waved his hands over the vial of light blue liquid, and quickly it turned crimson. He smiled, angled, knife-like teeth flashing in the light of his cave fire.

"Your child shall be strong of body and wit, but he shall lack speed and wisdom. Of temperance, he will have little, if any," said the sorceror. He handed Cassandra the vial, and there her memories of the journey ended, melting into darkness.

The elixir had worked, and now they had their child, a son if Gannondorf had guessed correctly. Or maybe it wasn't a guess at all, she thought. Maybe the elixir was designed to produce a son, not a daughter. Either way, we finally have a child of our own.

It was almost an hour later when Luther returned, and she had taken to the edge of the flatbed so the others could retrieve their bags. She offered her husband a wan grin. "Did they seem confused on the count?"

"No, but the man I spoke with seemed surprised by the size I described. He asked me if might have been sleeping with a spiney." They shared a laugh at that, then headed slowly for the hovel that was home. It would be the longest week of their lives before returning for the hatching.

The full moon shone overhead, illuminating the strand more brightly than the guards had ever seen. Between the darkness of the lake's waters and the clear view of all on the beach, a haunting vision stretched before them. Fire flowers tucked in their belts, Rompus and Willow, green tribe winged koopas, glided up and down the strand, keeping watch over a newly laid batch of eggs.

"I hate these quiet laying grounds," Rompus complained, his nasally voice piercing Willow's ears. She hated it when he got whiny, because the sound of his voice became more than odd, pitching into downright annoying. "They creep me out."

"Stow it, Romp," she muttered. She pointed to movement along the beach. "Beetle Bailey. You want this one?" Without a verbal reply, Rompus swiftly dove ahead and downward, scooping up the giant blue insect creature. He flew up a good fifty feet, positioned himself over a nasty bit of rock outcropping, and dropped the creature to its death, shell shattered and body broken on the jagged stones. He flew back to Willow then, flushed and bright-eyed. "Better?"

"Always a rush," he said. "Why are they always the first ones at a laying stretch?"

"Because they can smell the shells. There's a kind of film on koopa eggs that they ingest, it's kind of a superfood for Baileys," Willow answered. "It's not just koopa eggs, either. Spiney eggs have it too."

"Why don't we get assigned to protecting those?"

"Because spineys are just another animal in the Gora Empire. You ever meet a spiney that could talk," she asked cynically. Rompus pouched his lips disapprovingly. "Thought not." She descended toward one of the partially covered egg pits, looking down at them carefully. Rompus came down, walked up the strand toward another pit. Willow crouched down, staring at the little round shells with their slight, rusty red hue, barely noticable unless one looked hard.

"Willow," Rompus called out, his tone alarmed. Willow spun about, fire flower in her left hand, right hand raised with a swirling fireball in it. Rompus was looming over a pit, back to her, head angled down.

"What's wrong, Romp?" But he said nothing, instead using on hand to wave her over to him. She extinguished the fireball by making a fist and put the flower back in her belt, approaching him cautiously. As she came up beside him, Rompus just pointed down. She looked down and gasped, jaw hanging open. "Dear gods," she rasped. "It's enormous."

"The tint, Willow, look at it," he replied, smiling broadly. "It's green." She saw it now, a faint coloration along the shell, and felt tears threaten at the backs of her eyes. Winged they may have been, but they too had long suffered from the Empire's caste system, denied rights and privileges because of their status as commoners.

"This could change things," she whispered. "What if other greens start having them this size? We could be respected as equals with the reds again, maybe even the yellows."

"One thing at a time, Willow," Rompus said, for once acting as the voice of reason. "First, we have to guard this egg." And so they did, until the sun made its ascent into over the horizon and a pair of red flying koopa guards, paratroopas, came along to relieve them.

Neither would be able to stop thinking of that giant egg.

Cassandra paced back and forth in the hut's main room, recovered from delivery. It had been four days now, and though she knew it was driving Luther mad, she continued wearing a groove in the threadbare rug laid over the stone floor. Luther looked up from his paper and sipped his coffee. "Sit down, Cass. Worrying won't bring the day of retrieval any quicker."

"But what if he hatches early," she asked, bags under her eyes. Luther hadn't seen her in such a state since their return from Hyrule with the elixir. "What if he hatches early and one of the guards takes him away for their own?"

"You know they wouldn't do that," Luther said, searching his mind for a means of distracting his wife. "Hear, now, did you pick a name for him yet?" Cassandra seemed to go blank for a moment, then shook her head. She nipped off into the hut's bedroom, returning with a heavy old book. She sat down across from Luther and opened it. "Which book is that?"

"It's 'Legends of the Lands of Famicom'," she said, beaming. "I've been reading through this in the hopes of finding a name that would fit. I've come across a couple of giants, but they were humanoid, so it didn't seem to fit." She fetched herself a cup of coffee and started reading, allowing for a comfortable quiet to settle between them.

It was about an hour later that Luther got his lunch pail ready and gave his goodly wife a kiss before heading down the road for work. At the time, and for the previous five years, he had been a bricklayer for one of the castles blonging to Emperor Harin's family. Specifically, it had been for Dopa Harin, the second son. Now, he was about to start in on the construction of interior defenses per the Emperor's request. Each of his seven children would have their own castle, while he and Empress Kylie shared the eighth and largest keep.

Cassandra kept reading after he left, and a couple of hours later, she had a name for their son. She couldn't wait for Luther to get home so she could share it with him. She wondered how her boy would react to it. She believed that names carried an importance, a weight, of their own. Cassandra whispered his name aloud to herself.

Moments later, many miles away, the egg began to crack. Bowser was about to be born.