Purple and Petrichor - An SMG34 AU

The Man In Purple

It was a rainy Tuesday night in the castle and SMG4 stared at the silver clock hanging on the wall as he always did on days like this. He could've been making memes with this time, but all he really wanted to do today was explore outside. The minutes and seconds ticked by, seeming to last longer than they actually did and Four couldn't help but think. It was a thought that seemed permanently stuck at the back of his mind, and it was now pestering him again. He turned to SMG1 and SMG2. "What's in the Internet Graveyard? You two told me it's important to the meme lifecycle, so why can't we go there?"

SMG1 sighed. "We've already told you plenty of times why you can't. It's not safe there. And besides, we threw that dangerous man SMG3 there two years ago!"

SMG4 remembered that day. SMG3, having been defeated at WOTFI 2020, had been banished to the Internet Graveyard. A while later, SMG1 and SMG2 had taught Four all about the SMGs and the meme cycle... wait, did they even tell SMG3? Anyway, that's the day that SMG4 learned that he needed to work with SMG3. A new threat was looming on the horizon – Eldritch SMG0 – and SMG4 had figured out that he'd need to team up with SMG3 to help stop it. Despite this, SMG1 and SMG2 insisted on taking on the threat themselves.

SMG4 was not going to let that happen.

He tried to help them in as many ways as possible, and in some sort of miracle, they defeated Zero. Of course, the final battle was not without casualty. The sheer amount of power required to beat Zero mostly came from the older two SMGs and left SMG2 paralysed from the waist down (who became a wheelchair user), scarred SMG4 on his left cheek and stripped away the remainder of SMG1's textures. On top of that, they lost both Melony and Axol that day. Sometimes, SMG4 wondered what would've become of this world if one or both of them had survived.

Just when things couldn't get much worse, barely a year later, they were slapped with a lawsuit from the big boys themselves: Nintendo. They didn't like the use of Mario and other Nintendo IPs as goofy dumb characters in SMG4's videos. After a long and tiring trial, they settled on giving all the non-Nintendo characters their own designs rather than some, such as SMG4 himself, being a variation of Nintendo IP. SMG4 quite liked his new slick black hair and smaller nose. He did miss the moustache, but it often got in the way of things anyway. The scar on his cheek remained, though he felt like he was finally truly himself. It did take a while to get recognised, since his face was completely different.

But where was SMG3 in all this? He was who-knows-where in the Internet Graveyard doing who-knows-what. Or he was a rotting corpse.

Realising that he had spaced out, SMG4 got back into the moment. "Erm... wouldn't that mean that SMG3 is dead by now?"

SMG2 was the one to reply this time. "You're not going there, Four. You simply aren't."

SMG4 noticed that neither of the older SMGs confirmed or denied anything, as if they knew something that he didn't. Four sighed in defeat, knowing that he'd just be subjected to watch the droplets of water hit the window until the weather got better. Or make memes. However, SMG4 was still not in a meme-making mood. He walked away from the cosmic duo, giving them both a subtle side-eye.

As he walked into the kitchen, SMG4 noticed the dark clouds in the sky finally clearing away. He quickly gulped down his Dasani, hopped into his colourful wellington boots (he was very childish) and stepped outside the door into the muddy landscape.

The dirt was a sort of sticky mud, the grass almost becoming a marsh of wet brown goop. SMG4 didn't care about that, he enjoyed walking around nonetheless. He hugged the trees and stopped to take in a breath of fresh air. Though he didn't like to admit it, SMG4 often didn't leave his room for hours on end, not even opening a window. The air outside seemed so much... cleaner.

He approached and danced around the duck pond merrily, before accidentally dropping one of his mittens in the pond whilst attempting to get them on.

He stopped moving. He had the right outfit to go in and get it, but instead he just silently stared as the mitten drifted along the water's surface, unsure if he should pick it up or not.

That was, until that man came.

He was dressed in a rather odd outfit. He had dark overalls and a purple shirt, and his medium length hair was a chestnut brown. He had a striped scarf the pale oranges and bold reds of the autumnal leaves that fell from the trees.

He didn't do much, he merely bent down and picked up the soggy mitten from the pond and placed it in the hands of a very confused SMG4. Before Four could even get a look at the stranger's face, he was gone. Four could see the footsteps in the mud, though they only led to a dead end against a wall.

This entire encounter was peculiar, SMG4 thought. He decided to make his way back to the castle like nothing ever happened, carrying the drenched mitten in his hands, still wondering who that man was. When SMG4 tried to recall the stranger's features, it seemed more and more hazy.

There was something in the back of his mind stopping him from telling SMG1 or 2, whether that was for the best or not.

He walked back to the castle, and, since it was now late into the night, changed into his pyjamas and went to bed.

(A/N 966 words, i think i started writing this 2024-02-26)