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.
Alright so I just thought of a really random thing.
Both Klaus and Gilgamesh Wulfenbach are really good fighters. Like, they both managed to whup Jäger butt and throw Othar through a window.
And then I imagined lil small kiddo Gil and Klaus play-fighting. TINY BABY MUNCHKIN CHILD GIL TRYING TO TAKE DOWN HIS TANK OF A FATHER. BY AMBUSH WHEN HE’S IN HIS LAB. KLAUS GIVING HIM A SMALL BIT OF A CHALLENGE (at the very least it’s valuable learning experience) AND THEN LETTING HIM WIN.
@girlgeniusevents: Day One- Fairy Tale / Alternate Universe / Crossover
This was supposed to be so much bigger!! There was going to be lightning!! And cleaner lines!! But events transpired that this is as good as it’s gunna get.
listen…..i want in-universe girl genius Discourse™, set in the gg version of our time period, about how All Your Historical Faves were Problematic. p l e a s e.
there is a NEVERENDING WAR about klaus and whether he just took his methods too far or if he was a terrible person or if he was a bad person trying to do a good thing or vice versa. everyone has a totally different opinion.
people arguing over tarvek’s constant side-switching, not helped by the romantic storyline of falling for and trying to save the heterodyne. accusations of "you’re only defending him because he was pretty!”
god…i want this too tbh. give me the present-day epilogue of history nerds and vaguely-interested non-nerds fighting it out.
Tarvek’s going to write memoirs, we all know that. He’s going to pull a Winston Churchill and write a multi-part autobiography explaining everything he did and why they were all the right choices at the time, even if on occasion in retrospect some are a little…iffy. (And those concessions are only there because Agatha and Gil wouldn’t let him get away with publishing without.) (Memoirs of a King, Vol.1-4, King Tarvek Sturmvoraus. Pressoir d’Élyseé)
Cheloneuniverse 