Fanfic / The Mega Man Loops

Part of The Infinite Loops project.

Based on an insanely popular and long-running video game franchise created by Capcom in the 1980s, these Loops follow the cast of the Mega Man series as the Administrators of Yggdrasil work to repair the World Tree computer that contains and runs the multiverse. The Mega Man branch, however, was badly damaged in the initial event, so setting the initial Mega Man Classic branch to Looping proves rather difficult. It succeeded, eventually, and further branches have since been activated. These are:

• The Mega Man series, which started the franchise: Due to the initial difficulties in activating it, Rock and his sister Roll are co-Anchors.
• The Mega Man X series, with X, the last creation of Dr. Light, as its Anchor.
• The Mega Man Zero series, with X's old ally Zero as its Anchor.
• The Mega Man ZX series, with an undetermined Anchor.
• The Mega Man Legends series, with Volnutt and Data as Co-Anchors.
• The Mega Man Battle Network series, set in a distinctly alternate universe from the original five (which are in the same timeline, but with a hundred years or more between them), with Lan Hikari and his Net-Navi Mega Man as co-Anchors.
• The Mega Man Star Force series, set 200 years after the Battle Network Loops, with Geo Stelar and Omega-Xis as co-Anchors.

Crisis' Mega Man Loops compilation can be found here. The original discussion threads are here - 1 2 and 3. They have since been taken up by the second Nintendo thread.

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The Mega Man Loops provide examples of:

• Amnesia Missed a Spot: The Anchors aren't supposed to remember their failed Loop attempts, and yet they do due to a bug. According to Hephaestus, this applies to every Anchor in the Megaverse.
  • Also, Blues, Rock and Roll can remember parts of the Loop that caused the Crash, along with glimpses of the Anchor That Never Was (though they simply recall the Anchor as a "person-shaped hole". This is supposed to be beyond completely impossible.
• Anticlimax:
  • During the first Loop, Doc Reaper crawls its way across a raging battlefield, hoping to get to a much larger body. It does so, and starts boasting to the Loopers about how it's going to kill them... and then Duo shows up and takes it out in one shot.
  • Rock and Sonic find themselves in a trap with twenty-two Paradox Clones facing them... at which point Sonic snaps and smashes them all.
  • Waltz's end as a threat, with enough of the viral code being cleared out to leave her unable to Loop further.
• And This Is for...: Roll delivers one of these to Waltz during their duel in the first loop, naming off the various atrocities Waltz and the Robot Masters under her command had committed during one of the earlier aborted loop attempts.
• Ax-Crazy: Waltz, an evil duplicate of Roll built by Dr. Wily with future technology and the Distaff Counterpart to Quint. Instead of trying to mess around with the heroes' heads or follow orders, all she cares about (or even talks about) is her desire to messily slaughter her opponents. During her second appearance in Loop 1.0, Quint stabs her In the Back and destroys her IC chip solely because she's too much of a liability this way.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Blues and Dr. Light, during the first Loop.
• Berserk Button: Anyone who hurts Roll will have to face a pissed-off Bass.
• Beware the Silly Ones: During the Mega Sonic Loop, the Hooligans of all beings manage to get the drop on the Light siblings. Not enough to cause any serious damage, but there is a Fake Kill Scare.
• Beyond the Impossible: During a Loop that crossed over with The Conversion Bureau, Dr. Wily (who is not Looping) was somehow able to get himself and his robots past the impenetrable anti-tech barrier that surrounded that version of Equestria "without even scratching the paint." He didn't take the barrier down or anything; he just took his army straight through it. Even the Awake Doctor Light has trouble explaining how Wily manages to pull off half the things he does.
• Big Brother Instinct: Rock and Blues both warn Bass about upsetting Roll. Though as Blues points out, if Bass did upset Roll, anything her brothers could do would be redundant compared to her in a bad mood.
• Big Damn Heroes: Several throughout the first Loop, Duo most of all, but the king of this has to be Shadow and Bass managing to arrive at the exact last second and save both Loops, in only a few seconds.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Roll gives Bass one for the aforementioned last-second save. As she puts it, if that didn't earn him one date, nothing ever would.
• Body Horror: Double's transformation into the Jello Devil should be funny. It isn't.
• Break the Cutie: The events of the failed initial Loops were not kind to the three prospective Anchors, Roll and Blues especially. The fact that they all somehow retain glitchy, corrupted memories of said events (which isn't supposed to be possible) doesn't help, either.
• Canon Foreigner: Reverend Dark, a robot worshiping fanatic. The man is stated to be the human identity of Dark Man, though it varies as to whether he's really a human who turns himself into a robot in the final stages of his fanaticism or another of Dark Man's holographic disguises.
• Cerebus Syndrome: For the most part, other Loop fics have mainly focused on the many different kinds of shenanigans the various Loopers could get into. The Mega Man Loops started out with a long sequence of failed attempts at bringing that universe online and the psychological impact it had on the three initial candidates for Anchors: Rock, Roll, and Blues. See From Bad to Worse for more.
  • It even carries through into the fused loop with Equestria, much to Rock and Roll's distress.
• Composite Character: The Crash Loop has Dr. Wily merged with eight other individuals (including Sigma, Weil and Dr. Albert), one of which is apparently not supposed to exist. Exactly how this one happened is unclear, but given that he's apparently possessed by something, it probably wasn't willing on any of their parts.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Dr. Wily and Dr. Eggman managing to take out Prospit and Derse, which are supposed to be defended by a small fleet.
  • Sonic defeating all twenty-two Paradox Clones in a few seconds.
• Deface of the Moon: Drs Wily and Eggman deface Prospit and Derse, after kicking the crap out of them.
• Demonic Possession: Dr. Wily spends most of the first Loop infected with a virus that pushes his nastier tendancies and tenaciousness into overdrive.
  • And then, in chapter 11, it manages to get into Blues.
• Dual Wielding: How Roll solves the Ra Moon problem in the first Loop. It almost kills her.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The only section capable of Looping at first in the classic games universe (and its variant). However, this doesn't stop X, Zero and Vile getting brief appearances in the Loop that causes the Crash.
• Eldritch Abomination: Hepheastus' speculation on whatever it was that took over Dr. Wily and caused the Crash is that it was either a virus from outside the natural Loop, or something that had grown with each failed Loop. Whatever it was, it was just one step below whatever it was that damaged Yggdrasil badly enough to cause the Loops in the first place.
• Evil Versus Evil: The Emerald Spears versus the Church of Robotic Superiority, early in Loop 1.
• Foreshadowing: While discussing the Dreaming Bug, Hephaestus mentions there is every chance it'll wind up in someone who would definitely abuse it for their own ends. Lo and behold, it turns out the bad doctor is one of these.
  • Hephaestus sets up Rock, Roll, and Blues in a strange three-anchor configuration that will either automatically downgrade Roll and Blues to normal loopers if there’s no issue, or (in an emergency) handle the loss of any one of them by permanently setting the other two to full anchor status. He admits that the second scenario only has a 2% chance of working. Later on, the success chances drop to 2% and go no further, making him realize that his emergency contingency is now immediately relevant, giving him just enough time to pull off a miracle.
• Friendly Enemy: Bass has a thing for Roll. Considering she can kick his ass, it might count as In Love with Your Carnage. Not so much for Rock, though.
• From Bad to Worse: First, it was discovered that the entire extended Megaverse was so corrupted that initially, only the Classic series was capable of Looping. Then Rock, Roll, and Blues were successively put through a series of failed initial Loops that only ended up damaging the system further with each failed attempt, leading up to the last go-around with Blues collapsing less than ten seconds in. Then the admin tried to stabilize the system with a Fused Loop, but a psychopathic viral AI that had manifested as a result of all the corrupted data managed to capture Rock, Roll, Blues, and the visiting Anchor and use them in a ritual meant to give the AI admin-level godhood and let it wreak havoc throughout all of Yggdrasil. Yggdrasil's defenses kicked in and destroyed the AI before that could happen, but the visiting Anchor was obliterated at the conceptual level, his or her entire home universe was also lost as a result, and Yggdrasil experienced a major system crash that was felt across multiple universes. The disaster left the Megaverse on its last legs; if the next attempt at initiating a Loop (which required help from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe to increase the chance of success to 90%) failed, it ( and quite possibly the Sonicverse as well) would be gone for good.
  • The first Loop's situation in a nutshell. Especially when the Skaia Protocol shows up. Skaia Protocol alone would be a bad sign, but Skaia experimented on by mortals? Worse. Those mortals being Doctor Eggman and Wily? Much, much worse.
• Future Me Scares Me: Quint and Waltz, the evil future-copies of Rock and Roll, respectively. Quint is usually a Noble Demon, but Waltz is far, far worse.
• Godzilla Threshold: Normally, a Loop only has one Anchor. The fact that this universe required three is just how desperate Hephaestus's situation has become. Note that per Word of God three native Anchors for a single looping universe (or section thereof) is as many as Yggdrasil will allow.
• Gone Horribly Right: In one Loop, Wily improves Ra Moon's EMP. He turns it on, and it kills everything on Earth.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Whenever Roll merges with Tango, she has a tendency to say 'nyan', much to her distress.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: One of Blue's failed loops ended when a glitch allowed King to slice him in half.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Bass was helping the Anchors (to impress Roll) when the reality warp hit. After that, Dr Wily reprogrammed him to be obedient.
• Inexplicably Awesome: During the Mega Pony Loop, Rock admits he's got no idea how Auto does the things he does.
• Interface Screw: When the author posted the log for the horrifically failed Fused Loop attempt, he encrypted it to make it resemble a corrupted file and challenged his readers to see who could successfully decrypt it first. The winner was allowed to post the decrypted version for all to see shortly afterward.
• Lemony Narrator: Model V, otherwise known as Vile, is called "vile" by Blues' narration.
• Lighter and Softer: The post-Activation Loops are (usually) the standard Looper craziness.
• Million to One Chance: The desperate attempts of Hephaestus and Hermes to sustain the merged loop quickly fail, not helped by the presence of the Skaia Protocol. The chances of the Loop's success drops from the original 90% to 2%, then to utter gibberish, then right down to 0.0001%, which is as low as the numbers can possibly go. Only Bass and Shadow's intervention saves both realities.
• Mind Screw: One set of Loops is host to a bizarre glitch which causes the Loops to shut down. For some reason, the glitch comes in the form of the Beatles singing. It even messes with the chapter's numbering system.
• Mood Whiplash: In some of the failed loops, something ridiculous tends to happen (Dr Wily announcing his plans to take over the world with interpretive dance, Rock facing a Cheddar Monk in the World Robot Tournament) just before reality crashes again.
• Mythology Gag: The first attempt at starting up the loops ended when Rock encountered Bond Man, a glue-based Robot Master who was initially planned to be in the first game but was scrapped before character designs could be made when the number of Robot Masters was cut down to six.
  • Several of the failed Loops either take elements from or are outright based on many different Mega Man Classic adaptations, some more obscure than others.
• Never Heard That One Before: In the second part of the Pitchblende Loop (a Fused Loop with Atomic Robo), Atomic Robo teams up with Mega Man and Roll against Wily. Before heading out, he tells Dr. Light (his creator this Loop) this:
  Atomic: "I'll see you when this is over. Let's rock 'n roll."
  The Light twins groaned loudly while their father chuckled.
  Atomic: "You've, uh, probably heard that before, huh?"
  Roll: "We never stop hearing it."
• No Death Run: Given the utter mess left by the plethora of attempts to start the universe looping, the local Yggdrasil admin was forced to make Rock, Roll, and Blues into Co-Anchors. If any of them dies during this attempt, it will fail.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: A non-looping Junkman.exe in the Battle Network activation Loop. Due to reasons, he takes on an army of Nebula navis and towards the end of the battle, his hit points drop to zero, and then keep going. He then loses half of his remaining body and still has enough strength to try and accomplish his objective before Nebula's leader shows up and atomizes him.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Whatever it was that possessed Dr. Light in one of Blues' failed Loops, and then Dr. Wily, absolutely nothing about it is explained.
• Nothing Personal: Nack the Weasel says this after being attacked by an angry Bass. Bass points out that Nack shot his dog, and his would-be girlfriend. So it is in fact very personal for him.
• Off with His Head!: Blues tries this on Terra. However, all he manages is some Eye Scream.
• Oh, Crap!: Far too many in the first Loop to count.
• Omnicidal Maniac: In a choice between reforming or not reforming, Waltz screams she'd much rather bring reality down around her.
• One-Winged Angel: In a fused loop with Sonic the Hedgehog, Waltz manages to acquire the powers of Metal Overlord. Fortunately the heroes strip her of them before she's killed by Bass and Omega, meaning she doesn't have them in future Loops.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Roll mocks Dr. Wily in his bad "Mister X" disguise during the first Loop.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The thing possessing Dr. Wily, Sigma, Dr. Weil and Dr. Albert that caused the Crash had a machine designed to get it into the Loops that operated like this, using Rock, Roll, Blues and The Anchor Who Never Was as fuel.
• Puzzle Boss: How the fight against Egg Denizen: Consort in the first loop played out. Her entire shtick was to set up a massive barrier between the heroes and the Eggman-Wily lair. Fortunately, she was under a Geas which required her to explain how the barrier could be breached... unfortunately, the only thing that could do so was a symbol of true (romantic) love. The solution? Loading Bunnie and Antoine's wedding rings into a rail gun Tails had installed in Bunnie's bionic arm and using them to shoot the Consort through the chest and head.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Egg Denizens, the Gods of Skaia turned by Eggman and Wily into their minions. And there's a lot of them.
• Rage Breaking Point: In one loop where Dr Wily's inventions are designed are Russian-themed, one bad Russian Reversal joke drives Roll into a momentary frenzy.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Roll towards Dr. Wily in one of the failed Loops, after he graphically murdered Rock. She had every intention of killing him for it, only failing because the Loop crashed.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Roll has a lot of the symptoms of one. Her fourth failed Loop is the main culprit.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Happens to Blues in one of the failed loops, at the hands of an evil Dr Light. He still hasn't gotten over it.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Blues makes it clear to Nack the Weasel that if he had actually killed Rock and Roll, this trope would have been averted with extreme prejudice.
  • As they are free from the constraints of their programming, Rock and Roll could kill if they wanted to. Fortunately the situation has never been bad enough for them to seriously consider it. Usually.
• Unexplained Recovery: Despite having her IC chip destroyed earlier in the first loop, Waltz returns during the attack on the Wily-Eggman base, ready to fight and just as crazy as ever.
• Unstoppable Rage: Roll, in her fourth failed Loop. She had every intent of killing Dr. Wily because of what he did to her brother. The only reason she doesn't succeed is because the Loop fails.
• Verbal Tic: Roll develops one whenever she uses the Tango Booster, which causes her to randomly say 'Nya' when speaking.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 11. The thing that plagued the early Loops returns. And it's in Blues.
• Wham Line: "Did you miss me?"
• X Called; They Want Their Y Back: Variant in the fourth Battle Network chapter:
  Apollo: "The lovely Mayl and the enchanting Roll are raining on your villainous parade!" (does Phoenix Wright's pose) "Like a boss!"
  Hephaestus: "Apollo, Phoenix Wright just called. He's suing you for copyright infringement."
  Apollo: "Wait, really?"
  Hephaestus: "No," ... "No mortal has access to my office number and you know it. But I'll find a way to let him know you were ripping him off."
• You Can't Fight Fate: Despite their best efforts, Rock and Roll can never get around fighting Sunstar.