Chapter Text
We all know the story. Three times, in 2001, 2013 and 2019, King Boo sought global domination and became obsessed with eliminating the two people standing in his way—the Super Mario Brothers. Specifically, he grew fixated on Luigi as he faced his fears and thwarted the mad tyrant’s plans thrice over. And all three times, the people of the Mushroom Kingdom rallied around Luigi and his mentor, Professor Elvin Gadd, as they worked together to defeat King Boo and save the world as we know it.
In the spirit of Halloween, however, it’s time to set aside that story and turn to an alternate timeline.
Let’s set the scene of this alternate timeline:
October 2026—25 years since King Boo’s first defeat, and to mark the occasion, he’s planning something big—a full-scale invasion of the MK and her allies—and beyond.
First, though, he needs to escape from his prison in Professor Gadd’s lab.
Luckily for him, this alternate timeline has seen numerous fringe groups create a revisionist history of his conflict with Luigi and spread conspiracy theories about the entire affair. Namely, that the first incident in 2001 was a “false flag operation” to boost Luigi’s popularity. These groups have spread like a virus since the early 2020s, as the MK recovered from a global pandemic and misinformation about the virus and the measures world governments had taken to fight it began to taint the idyllic fantasyland.
By 2026, these groups had united into a large militia of sorts, known as the Advocates for King Boo, or AKB for short. The AKB saw King Boo as the underdog standing up to a decadent, selfish establishment while ignoring the atrocities he’d committed and the torment he put Luigi through. Their aim was to free King Boo from what they viewed as an unjust imprisonment, help him strengthen his armies and enable him to take his long-denied revenge. To accomplish this, they sent an undercover operative to apply for a job working for Professor Gadd, where they would win his and Luigi’s trust and gain access to the vault where King Boo, a handful of his fellow Boos, and his lady love, Hellen, were being held.
When the time was right, the AKB would break King Boo out and unleash him on an unsuspecting populace. In the meantime, they distributed leaflets to sow discord among the MK’s citizens and hijacked TV and radio stations to spread propaganda, manipulating them into questioning their faith in not only their government but also their two protectors.
In October, a festival commemorating the 25th anniversary of King Boo’s first defeat would be held, and the AKB saw this as the perfect opportunity to strike. As the day of the festival neared, the organizers received word of security concerns and threats of violence. Should the festival be cancelled to ensure everyone’s safety, or should it move forward in defiance of these threats?
Would the MK and her allies once again place their trust in Luigi and Gadd, like in our timeline, or would paranoia, misinformation and arrogance prevail?
Find out in this brand-new Halloween special…
…Our Awakening.