MUSHROOM KINGDOM — Yoshi, the famed dinosaur sidekick of Super Mario, has revealed that he will stop at nothing to kill Princess Peach after being directed to by the Mysterious Book.

“YOSHI! YOSHI,” he said to anyone who would listen, which our experts have translated to the common tongue as the following. “The princess must die. For years I thought she was my friend as we all did but the Mysterious Book has made clear this was the great lie. We exist in a system built on hypocrisy and she is the one who benefits. The lead hypocrite. She represents everything wrong with life in the Mushroom Kingdom and beyond. She must die for the betterment of us all. She must die. She must. Die.”

Yoshi’s friends claim that his descent into madness is partly to be blamed on a new group of friends he’s met online.

“Mario and Luigi haven’t been spending much time with him recently, so he’s been lonely,” claimed Birdo. “He recently met a group online called the Proud Koopas and they’ve been filling him with all these terrible ideas. But they aren’t his friends. They preyed on his loneliness to get him mad at the world. They’re the ones that gave him the Mysterious Book, saying it was interesting literature that would open his eyes. I read it and it’s just a bunch of insane nonsense, but unfortunately Yoshi is illiterate, so he thinks the book wants him to murder the princess.”

Princess Peach’s top aide Toadsworth has downplayed claims that this could have been avoided had they enacted harsher punishments on Bowser and his followers.

“Yes, Bowser and his followers have repeatedly tried to kidnap the princess and kill Mario and Luigi, but we cannot stoop to their level. We must find common ground and work together. It is unfortunate that Yoshi has fallen in with some extreme radicals loyal to Bowser, but such is life. What we really need to be focusing on is the problem of Lakitu.”

At press time, after his most recent assassination attempt, Yoshi is reportedly stuck on the roof of Peach’s castle.