madgirlofmechanicsburg:

Modern Girl Genius AU where Heterodyne Labs is actually a big R&D  company, operating out of small but lively city Mechanicsburg.

The company has had a fairly sketchy past, but latest CEOs Bill and Barry have managed to salvage it’s financial and ethical reputation, along with high-ranking board member Klaus Wulfenbach.

Lucrezia is a sharp-minded businesswoman with her own ideas of how to run the place. When she is proposed to by Bill, she transfers Klaus to a different branch. But when she and the Heterodyne brothers go missing, he takes over running the place until young Agatha completes college and comes of age, where she then steps up and has to figure out how to run a business.

Tarvek has just recently inherited a rival company, and is highly interested in a merger (Tweedle, on the other hand, simply wants to buy them out). Von Zinzer is an temp who never wanted to be there in the first place but did and now he’s hired. The Von Mekkhan family were probably also board members, except Vanamonde seems to operate entirely out of the Starbucks in the lobby. Krosp is a shrewd financial adviser. Gil is still Klaus’s son, with little interest in running a company and more interest in playing in the laboratories. Othar is probably some sort of activist against big businesses and the way the practice science and is constantly stirring up rallies and trying to sue. I’m not yet sure about Zeetha or the Jägers…

Superhero twist, which was where I was originally going with this for the sake of having an AU to roleplay in, is that the company’s “sketchy past” is that it seems to keep getting tied up with supervillains (seems = it is literally providing funding and tech for the supervillain-prone Heterodyne family. Kinda like Oscorp). Bill and Barry have turned this on it’s head, protecting the city in their spare time instead. Lucrezia, however, was thinking that world domination was actually a pretty good idea. Probably got herself and husband stuck in another dimension. Klaus knew about this and ran the company like an actual company during his time and not as a front, only kicking butt when absolutely necessary. Agatha has to choose between the villain or hero path once this becomes revealed to her, and kinda ends up as Iron Man with an overfondness for death rays, or maybe like Gru from Despicable Me after he gave up supervillainy. The Castle Heterodyne AI is kinda like J.A.R.V.I.S.. Lars probably showed Agatha all the secret stuff and then promptly got fired by Klaus.