The potion tasted like ash and lightning, and for three full days Bowser couldn’t tell if it had worked or if he’d just poisoned himself for nothing. Then he caught his reflection in a cooled lava pool and nearly fell in.

Horns, smaller. Skin, warm and human-toned instead of green. Eyes the same — sharp, gold, unmistakably his — but set in a face that could’ve passed for any reasonably attractive man, if you ignored the faint scales still dusting his shoulders like he hadn’t quite finished the transformation. Good enough, he decided. Good enough for her.

He showed up at the castle with flowers he’d definitely stolen from someone’s garden and a speech he’d rehearsed too many times. Peach opened the door, looked him up and down, and said, kindly — which somehow made it worse — “Bowser, this doesn’t change anything. I love Mario. I’m sorry.”