#haltmann meme guardians au

[duckapus]

If Mario was in... Big Run

Disaster has struck once again as the Mushroom Kingdom is overrun by Salmonid invaders! It's all hands on deck to drive them off and figure out what brought them there in the first place, with the Crew obviously on the front lines of the conflict...though some are there for slightly less altruistic than others, with Mario, Bob and Swag in particular seeing it as an excuse for the world's biggest seafood cookout. A course of action that Meggy and Boopkins can't even really fight against this time, seeing as it's apparently actually respectful of Salmonid culture.

Anyway, things get so bad that Joe Boopkins shows up to assist, which is apparently exactly what the Salmonids were waiting for because they manage to ambush him by bringing both Cohozuna and Horrorboros out seemingly from nowhere. The two King Salmonids manage to overpower their fellow Kaiju and drag him out to sea, so most of the Crew, the Guards and Jubjub chase after them while everyone else stays behind to handle any Salmonids who didn't retreat along with the Kings. Also Jubjub makes friends with a Smallfry at some point during the battle so now the Boopkins bros have a roommate/pet/third brother, depending on who you ask.

The rescue squad follows their enemies to an island fortress, where they discover that this particular group of Salmonids are being led by Admiral Sergeant Swipe, who returned to the sea after his defeat in "the Ballad of Dusty Grumpton," got shipwrecked and saved by the Salmonids, and somehow earned their trust and respect enough for them to follow his every command. So, of course, he got the idea to use them to finally capture all three Boopkins, concocting his current plan so he could both neutralize the incredible threat of Joe and use him as bait for his sons.

The standard combination of epic final boss battle and stupid memey bullshit inevitably ensues, and the fortress gets completely blown up while Joe carries the good guys to safety.

And the final shot is of a boat crewed by Haltworkers fishing A.S.Swipe's mangled-but-barely-living body out of the sea...

[duckapus]

Destistential Crisis

Between being dead for four years and not knowing whether or not she counts as the "real" Desti, DST-19 has been going through it ever since the end of the Haltmann war, and as much as the crew and her old teammates are trying to help most of them have similar hangups over it. The only exceptions are 3(who's offered his services as a therapist if she wants), Melony, the Hologram Trio and the kids, since none of them actually met the original her. These issues end up leading to a crazy, somewhat stupid misadventure on this particular day, because this is the Mushroom Kingdom, damnit!

Meanwhile, the Admins try to figure out the appropriate response to the Haltmann triplets' existence and origins, and our main group do their best to make sure this doesn't all end in tragedy.

[duckapus]

So while I was at work today I finally figured out how to transition from the setup phase of the Haltmann Meme Guardians AU to the second, more action-packed and properly story focused half of the arc.

Basically, Lag notices that there's some extra, unaccounted-for activity with the SMG commands, and when he asks the System why it didn't report this latest case of the False Positive glitch it insists that it isn't the glitch this time, just the new kids seeing what they can do. Now, that immediately sets off alarm bells in his head, since there isn't a new SMG universe, or even a plan to activate one anytime soon, and considering exactly which universe Lag used to be in charge of he's really not liking where this seems to be going.

He informs the rest of the main Admin group, they investigate, hoping beyond hope that it's not happening in the universe they all know it's going to be, and YEP, there's the newly rebuilt Access Arc sitting right on the edge of the SM64 universe's Solar System, practically marinating in Anti-Meme energy.

Unfortunately, as beings of pure code they can't go down and deal with this themselves. Well, technically they could, but that much Anti-Meme energy in that high a concentration would tear all but the strongest of them to shreds, and even those who could survive that would both be weakened enough to be completely at the mercy of whoever or whatever is in that station, and would need a month-long intensive detox treatment if they managed to get back out alive.

Meanwhile, all the mad scientists in the Mushroom Kingdom have disappeared, which includes Iggy Koopa and Eggman so BJ and Sage are freaking out, and given how the science fair all the way back at the start of the arc went down, not to mention the few times HWC has caused problems for them lately, the Crew does have one suspect in mind. So when the USBs tell them about the extra guardian/Anti-Meme space station thing, there's no doubt in their minds that the two situations are connected. And while the Admins can't directly investigate for the reasons stated above, and the Crew can't either since none of them are any good at subtlety, Mario, 4, Meggy and Saiko happen to know a certain semi-aquatic secret agent who can. And considering who one of the names on the list of missing scientists is, he's probably investigating already and would appreciate the lead.

So Perry infiltrates the new Access Arc while in contact with the Crew, and while he doesn't find everything he does find out some pretty important stuff. Obviously Susie's plan and the fact that her replacement Avatar/Guardian set are in fact children, and the fact that she's been very very exposed to the God Box fragment she ended up with and is absolutely not in her right mind (according to SMG1 it's a miracle that she hasn't turned into an Anti-Meme herself by now, let alone that she's as coherent as she is). But also the presence of Movie Mario, A.S.Swipe and the Salmonids, The Goomba, and a bunch of weird, fully purple Octoling Troopers with rough tentacles that Meggy finds oddly familiar.

There's also the fact that she kidnapped the mad scientists so she could give them front-row seats of her plan in action, partly to make up for how badly her last presentation in front of her peers went but mostly to rub it in E. Gadd's face.

Unfortunately for everyone, she's still missing one last thing to make the plan work; Elanore may be an Avatar, but she's not Super Mario 64's Avatar, and since neither the God Box nor The Goomba know how to fix that, she'll just have to reverse-engineer Mario's code and figure it out herself. To that end, she sends Yoshi to capture him, which manages to work.

With that new problem on top of all the other ones, it's actually Peach who comes up with a plan. Basically, if Haltmann wants a war, they've got one, but it'll be on the good guys' terms. The assorted militaries and superpowered beings of the world all band together, setting up to protect various key places around the globe, mainly the Mushroom Kingdom since that's where all the SMGs live but also various places that either have strategic value or one of the Crew and their extended friend group has some sort of connection to. After those preparations are complete, an armada of all sorts of weaponized space-faring vehicles will launch an assault on the Access Arc, both to force them into conflict before they're ready and provide a distraction for the Crew(plus Kirby since he's taken down an Access Arc before and is reasonably confident he can get through to his currently corrupted friend) to sneak aboard, extract Perry, and rescue Mario and the scientists(and whoever of the bad guys they can manage to get through to).

Melony specifically isn't part of the rescue team since she, Desmond, Steve, Super Sonic, Waluigi in his ultimate form and Ultra Instinct Shaggy, along with a few others, are going to be outside fighting Movie Mario so they don't have to deal with a crazy demon plumber tearing their entire armada apart or getting impatient and killing their Mario before it's safe to.

The kids also aren't going to be in any of the main battles, instead being kept safe in Primp Town...except Sage because she's Literally The Eggnet and the leader of the Eggman Empire in her dad's absence, and is thus in direct control of about a fifth of their side's collective firepower. Don't worry, just because they're not involved in the main conflicts doesn't mean they won't see some action of their own.

[duckapus]

Science Fair Follies

There's a Mad Scientist Convention in town and Mario, Luigi, Amitie, Sig and Floyd are helping E. Gadd with an experiment he'll be running there. Luigi's there because he's E. Gadd's mentee, Amitie and Sig are there because they wanted to help Luigi(well, Amitie wanted to help Luigi, Sig wanted to help Amitie help Luigi)[, Floyd's there because the experiment is ghost-related and she's the test subject, and Mario was promised food if he helped set things up. Sage is also there because of her dad. The start of the episode is just the expected mad scientist jokes, but then Susie Halmann shows up with the Haltmann Works Co's latest product, at which point it's revealed that she and the Professor have an intense rivalry. Also Floyd is wary of her, which is understandable considering what happened the last time she encountered an SMG4 universe version of one of her reformed villain friends back home.

One thing leads to another and the two scientists get into an inventing duel that wrecks the convention hall and gets them both banned from future conventions. While the main group just brushes it off as another wacky adventure, Susie ends up stewing in her frustration all the way home, where she finds out that there was a package delivered while she was out. Said package is a large crate with a picture of an old tv with a hat and bowtie stamped on the side, and inside she finds the broken, scorched pieces of a too-large-to-be-practical circuit board, glowing an ominous red...

[duckapus]

WOTFI: Mario vs Mario

The alternate Mario from Stupid Mario Movie has arrived to finish killing our Mario along with anyone who stands in his way. Fortunately, X(the youtuber, not the assassin who can possess people) and SMG4 manage to Bugs Bunny Logic him into settling this through a War of the Fat Italians. This confuses him enough that he only comes to his senses and remembers he's here for vengeance about halfway through the ending rap battle, and by that point it's pretty much too late and he gets launched all the way to that one part of the desert that looks uncannily similar to Ozymandias's prison. After that, he gets recruited by Susie because of course he does.

[duckapus]

Trouble at the Eggdog Corral

When dead memes, particularly most of the Eggdogs, start going missing, SMG3 recruits the rest of the crew to help him investigate. They eventually discover that the missing dead memes were captured by a half dozen small anti-memes and taken to a ranch where the Eggdogs apparently live, which has a giant, burnt, broken, ominously glowing computer mouse stuck in the roof. The hologram trio explain that this is debris from when SMG1&2 blew up the God Box, and similar occurrences have been reported in other universes as well. Thankfully the Anti-memes aren't all that strong with such a small piece of the God Box fueling them, so outside of the usual shenanigans the problem's not too hard to deal with, but it does cause some worry that this might not be the last time that particular adventure comes back to haunt them...

[duckapus]

Monitor's Duty

For the past few weeks, Hal has been investigating the Haltmann Works Company in his downtime due to their involvement in the release of the Goomba Who Sold the World, though he's had to be rather sneaky about it. Partly because, as the whole thing was technically above board, there's no legal precedent to investigate, partly because going up against a company as powerful as Haltmann is a dangerous prospect, but mostly because the Chief's been keeping him on a short leash following his involvement in the Estrella case.

The leads he's following in this episode eventually lead him to a file of video logs labeled "Project HMG," which show Susie preparing to research the God Box fragments she received from TV Adware, and then her slow descent into madness as she realizes what she's been given, starts coming up with "her" plan to usurp the SM64 universe's Meme Cycle (which will prove she's a better mad scientist than E. Gadd...somehow (again, she's not in her right mind at all here)), recruits A.S.Swipe, the tax evasion Yoshis and the Goomba (also she notes that beyond his usefulness as a source of information she's also given him a job as the head of Accounting. Haltmann does not waste resources, no matter how traditional a "you have outlived your usefulness" betrayal is for evil mad scientists), and makes headway on perfecting the cloning tech and figuring out how to generate Meme Energy. She notes that the Noids are an important step in both directions, and that an "Experient DST-19" has shown a surprising amount of promise for the former, given the condition the donor was in.

Unfortunately, Hal never gets the chance to tell anyone about this, because he ends up getting captured by Susie personally. And she could just get rid of him, but again, Haltmann doesn't waste resources, so she decides to reprogram and...upgrade him instead.

I mean, come on, he's a robot named HAL! He's practically asking for it!

[duckapus]

I remember you mentioning that, now that Lag knows there was a chance Niles could've been saved, the "old wound in his soul ripped open". And that if the Admins thought him being a depressed procrastinator was bad, they haven't seen anything yet.

And that made me curious: What is Lag like after learning all of that?? I'd imagine at the very least he'd be devastated, but it's kinda hard to imagine what else he would be feeling/doing/thinking

He kind of goes in the opposite direction from how his grief manifested last time, so now he's throwing himself into his work so he doesn't give himself time to think about it and he's Feeling Everything Really Strongly, and between the increasing sleep deprivation and how muted his emotions have been for the past several years he's not exactly great at regulating those strong emotions, or his reactions to them. And the fact that his wireframe scars have been acting up more lately is Not Helping.

On top of that he's more than a bit hung up on the "What If"s that this has brought to life, so alongside his actual duties he's trying to figure out for sure whether or not he could have saved Niles, which is also cutting into his sleep schedule and won't really do much other than make him more miserable in the long run, no matter which answer he gets.

[duckapus]

So how do you figure Lag's gonna feel when things calm down enough for him to stop and consider the implications of the Haltmann triplets' existence. Cause uhhh...those right there are beings created by the God Box. Just like Niles was. Except they're not falling apart under the weight of their incomplete code because a fucking NPC managed to figure out how to complete it.

Just. Was it really that simple all along? If he'd just stepped in and taken Niles to some non-evil mad scientist like Dr. Light or even checked him over himself or something could he have actually become a functional SMG instead of a monster?

All these years, one of the few things that kept the guilt even somewhat manageable was the understanding that anything, person or otherwise, that came from the God Box would be too damaged and full of malware to stabilize, and now there's living proof that that assumption was completely wrong. And suddenly that old wound in his soul that never quite healed gets torn wide open again.

[duckapus]

Anti-Memes for Dummies

Considering the growing threat that the God Box's debris poses, 3, 4 and Mario are learning how to more effectively combat Anti-Memes. It goes about as well as their usual training sessions, so there are shenanigans but they do get it done.

Meanwhile, at Haltmann HQ, Vee, Hex and Elanore are learning how to use their abilities (and compensate for how much weaker they are than normal Guardians and Avatars), when they discover that they're somehow immune to the corruptive effects of Anti-Meme energy.

And to top all that off, Movie Mario discovers his new connection to the God Box fragment and begins to experiment with the abilities it gives him.

[duckapus]

Mario Can't Avoid the Noid

Business is booming at the Pizza Stand, so Mario and Marty decide to add a delivery service and hire Boopkins and Marcy as the drivers. Unfortunately, this attracts the attention of Dominos Pizza's infamous anti-mascot the Noid, who promptly begins harassing them and trying to get in the way of the deliveries. The four of them respond in their usual ways, mostly just seeing the Noid as an annoyance rather than an actual threat...at least until he takes things too far and actually hurts Boopkins. That puts them on the warpath, and they rally all the other pizza places to join them in storming Dominos to get rid of the Noid once and for all, with the rest of the crew also joining in for Boopkins' sake.

When they get there, it's revealed that they're not the only one with an army. It turns out that in the SMG4 universe, Dominos is owned by Haltmann, and they've used their cloning technology to create hundreds of Noids, which is how he can show up to mess with any pizza delivery at any time. This'll be a battle for the ages.

[duckapus]

Since it's been a while since I wrote the posts for the original version of the Haltmann Meme Guardians AU, I figure I should explain what exactly Susie's plan is.

So the God Box fragment she got from TV Adware is slowly corrupting her while she's studying it, preying on her scientific curiosity and rivalry with E. Gadd to manipulate her into using it to create an Avatar & Guardian trio completely disconnected from the Admins, so it can take revenge on the group that destroyed it and usurp the Super Mario 64 universe's meme cycle for itself. It can't just create them on its own both because it's far weaker than when it was whole and full of dead universes, to the point where it can only manage a handful of small anti-memes like the mouse-based fragment in the Eggdog Corral, and because, as shown by Niles, it couldn't make a stable Guardian even if it was still intact.

Still, Susie doesn't really know anything about Avatars or SMGs beyond the general public knowledge of their existence and a few of their flashier abilities, and the information she'll find on the fragment when she's cleaning up its files won't get her there even if it will give her a good starting point because, again, Niles. And while she could probably figure it out on her own eventually, and did in the original version, there's a certain someone currently rotting in jail who knows more about the subject than anyone else not directly connected to the crew. Well, apart from Mr. L, but he's not exactly easy to track down. And given she's the president of an intergalactic megacorporation, legally getting one guy who nobody would even think is a threat anymore isn't exactly difficult.

This also gives Hal an actually good reason to be investigating the Haltmann Works Company (and eventually ending up captured and reprogrammed). After all, between his personal involvement in the original case and how similar the situation is to both Byte's escape and the Estrellas' release, he's not going to take the Goomba Who Sold the World getting bailed out and hired by a company once known for stripping entire star systems for parts sitting down.

[duckapus]

You know, the Haltmann kids probably have some complicated feelings about Mr. Puzzles, given how they only exist thanks to him delivering a God Box Fragment to their mom.

Puzzles, being Puzzles, would probably try to milk that connection for all it's worth if he was ever made aware of it.

[duckapus]

Peach's Moving Castle

When Peach installs a Haltmann Works Co. security system in her new castle it malfunctions, causing the building to sprout mechanical legs and run off. Mario finds out about this and convinces some of the Crew to help her get it back under control...even though most of them, as well as Peach herself, aren't exactly sure why the hell he would care considering everything about their current relationship (or lack thereof).

Saiko, meanwhile, makes it very clear that she wants nothing to do with this situation.

[duckapus]

SMG11 about herself and 12: We bring a "not in love with my partner" energy to the party that the other Guardians don't understand.

Vee, about herself and Hex: Same.

[duckapus]

So it was kind of weird that the military had a quarantine barrier strong enough to contain Program-enhanced Wonder Effects, Guardian Commands, and whatever Wonder Showtime might have been throwing at it before Marggy came into play, right? I mean, usually it's just the villains that have tech on that level.

Well, that's kind of the point. For far too long the universe has had to rely on scrappy heroes, divine intervention, and plain old dumb luck to fend off near-constant end-of-the-world scenarios, both from local troublemakers and from the various Programs, Viruses, and other Code Entities who happen to have beef with this particular server for whatever reason. Well, Emulator got sick of her NPCs being helpless in the face of all this chaos, especially considering the likes of TV Adware and Mr. L are already ahead of the game, so she decided to level the playing field.

For a while now, she and Lag (with support from the rest of the main Admins) have been collaborating with the Mushroom Kingdom military and Haltmann Works Company, as well as a few other tech-savvy groups in the other SMG Universes (or at least the ones where the SMG stuff is public knowledge) to create their own Code-Level defenses. The quarantine shield was one of the first things created from the project, reverse-engineered from One-Shot Wren's anti-admin signal blocker tech, which was initially recovered from the wreckage of his hideout and locked away by the Admins, and then eventually given to the military when the project began.

They're also working on stabilizers like the one Blotch has, as well as weapon, armor and vehicle designs, most notably Code Ships based on the Guardian Pods' ship forms (the ones seen in the Revelations Arc). Currently they're in the prototype stage for the ships, just retrofitting HWC ships to be able to withstand High-Density Internet Travel, but ships specifically designed for that are coming soon if all goes well. Both smaller transport ships, and larger vessels specced for long voyages, exploration, emergency rescue/evacuation, or yes, even combat. They're also working on something no one's figured out before; developing technology that can purify Anti-Meme energy by studying Hex and Vee's purification abilities and the jury-rigged code fixed on their pod that gave them said abilities in the first place. (just because Susie figured out how to fix that shard's garbled broken mess of code doesn't mean she knows exactly what part of that repair job gave her kids OP healing magic)

Actually, part of why Susie was out of town during the Wonder Arc was so she could check on how certain aspects of the project were progressing at her other facilities. For the most part things were running smoothly, but there was a break-in at their Port Aurora branch. Nothing irreplaceable was stolen at least, but the thief managed to decrypt and copy all files related to the HMG project.

You can probably guess who it was.