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crystalclear365 · 2 months ago

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Irregular Fever - Lore Post

Okay, I've been wanting to write about this for a while, and I now have the chance to do it! (Yippee!!)

This post will be covering the main conflict that happens in the sequel to How Are We Friends? A very brief explanation of the AU is that Bass becomes friends with Mega Man, along with Roll, Proto Man, and Kalinka.

OKAY - now that I've got that very short explanation out of the way, I'm just going to go straight into it. (Visuals will be included!)

But as a word of caution, this post is going to contain descriptions of body horror, which might make some people uncomfortable. If you're one of those people, please read carefully or feel free to scroll past!

HAWF itself takes place after Mega Man 11, but the sequel itself acts as a sort of bridge between the Classic series and the X-Series. If you really wanted to, you could interpret this as a hypothetical Mega Man 12 game, but it's more of an AU than anything else.

The main conflict in the sequel is going to be a new type of threat that Dr. Wily develops, that's supposed to be both an improved version of Roboenza, but also a precursor to the maverick virus - and Zero's going to play a key role in all of it. (He's around in this lol)

In Chapter 31 of How Are We Friends?, I hinted at Irregular Fever being developed by Dr. Wily by describing certain chips that were scattered around his lab when Bass and Treble enter. The way a robot could obtain the chip and insert it into themselves is by either taking it orally (like a pill), or having it inserted into their heads like an SD or game card, to put it frankly. I imagine they look a little something like this:

There are four (technically five, but the fifth one will be addressed in a moment) chips that Wily has developed. I'll start in the order of the one with the highest quantity to the least.

The green chips were the most developed numerically, yet they are the weakest in terms of effects and strength. In other words, they are the most common type of chip.

The purple chips are the second most common, having a stronger effect than the green chips. Intended to be used on more advanced or stronger robot masters.

There's a significant decrease in orange chips than in the other two colors, with there being only twelve exactly. These are to be used on the overseers of the project.

The red chip has the strongest effect out of the four, and it's the only one of its kind. And Wily made it just for Zero! :)

The fifth chip not shown is yellow. Dr. Wily intended for the yellow chip to be used on Bass, which would upgrade him to having both the strength and agility of a reploid, or something on Zero's caliber. It's also the only one of its kind.

Now to get into the effects and purpose of the chips. Oh boy.

The project itself is called Irregular Fever, which I named after the Japanese name of the Maverick Virus in the X-Series, which is called the Irregular Virus. The microchips themselves are simply called chips, but the effects that are caused by the chips are what's called Irregular Fever. (You get what I'm saying?)

I'll start with the good effects first, because there isn't a lot.

These chips are supposed to enhance a robot master both physically and mentally. If they're a robot built for combat, their weapons' effect will be boosted, and if they have a buster or arm cannon, their buster shots will be more powerful, with the chance of being able to use several charge shots in a row. They're speed will increase, along with overall movement, making them more efficient as a whole. Mentally, they'll be able to solve problems faster, have an increase in critical thinking as a whole, and an overall boost in intelligence.

Sounds good, right? I bet you're thinking about getting chipped right now, aren't you?

Now here are the side effects to everything that I've just said!

Side effects may include, but are not limited to:

Headaches/body aches

Sparking (like a firework)

Twitching/body spasms

Irregular (pun intended) heartbeat

Trouble breathing (Free asthma!)

Trouble sleeping (or entering "sleep mode")/restlessness

Frequent restarts or system shutdowns

Oil leakage in eyes and/or mouth

Sudden increase in aggression and/or violent behavior

The three laws (Asimov's Laws) being overridden/aggression and/or violence towards humans (only applies if their laws aren't removed already... Don't worry about that, it's just that a small detail in my AU is they can have the laws programmed out of them (HIGHLY illegal though.))

Anxiety or sudden panic attacks

Suicidal thoughts

Possible possession by Dr. Wily (yeah uhm- he'll be able to gain access to the actual robots themselves at any point in time. Not good...)

(There is a chance that a robot master won't experience any of these, but it's definitely not the norm.)

Even after the chip is removed, these effects can last up to about a month before fully subsiding.

...To play devil's advocate, Wily knew that there would be some side effects, as he wanted a way to control them by providing antidotes to their symptoms (which are temporary or straight up placebos), but he didn't expect all of THAT to happen. He's not that awful, guys! You gotta belie- *gets tranquilized*

Circling back to Irregular Fever as a whole, the whole purpose of it, as we all know, is so that Wily can take over the world with a whole army of robots, - not just his own, but also ones from around the world. He plans on Irregular Fever being a worldwide incident, similar to how the Maverick Virus is (Like I said before, it's the precursor to it). But he obviously can't do it alone, which is why he has assigned twelve overseers to the project. Unfortunately, I still haven't fully decided on who these robot masters would be, but I do know that four of them are Metal Man, Quick Man, Air Man, and Napalm Man. So I got that going for me. (I've just got to figure out eight more. Someone save me.)

Going back to how someone can obtain the chip, however, I imagine that Wily will first distribute it throughout the fortress, which will then lead to the Wilybots going out and passing the chips around like candy. But no one in their right mind would willingly take a random chip. That's the equivalent of walking up to someone and going like "Hey kid, want some free candy?" No one's going to buy that. So you wanna know what they do?:

They slip the chips into their e-tanks, their food (I like to think robot masters can eat, it just doesn't do anything for them. Food just gets incinerated by their cores or whatever) - heck, some will go as far as to insert it into others in their sleep. Then those newly chipped robots will go to Dr. Wily, gather more chips, and spread those out across the world. Rinse and repeat.

Now here's where the main cast is going to factor into all of this, including Zero!

Dr. Wily first tells Zero about the plan (Bass was supposed to be there when it happened, but he didn't want to go.), and he takes the red chip, which'll cause Zero to slowly go insane. But that's a story for another day (his "Irregular" state sort of alludes to Awakened Zero in the X-Series). Once the rest of the Wilybots are made aware of the plan, about 3/4 of the fortress gets chipped. However, the remaining 1/4 is forming their own resistance group, but I can't explain much about that without giving away spoilers to the main story. (Even though this whole post is one big spoiler... Just let me have this, okay?) (Bass is somewhat a part of this group, as he's friends with Rock now.)

When Dr. Wily informs Bass about the plan (to a certain extent), he gives him the yellow chip and tells him about all of the great things behind it, and how he could truly become the strongest if he were to take it. Bass responds and says he'll think about it, then goes to his room and does just that. Although he is tempted to take the chip (as one of his main functions is to become the strongest), he ultimately decides not to do it, because it would provide a strong conflict between him, Rock, and the others. Not only that, but he prefers getting stronger without using any "cheap tactics". (Yet he used the Evil Ener-)

Fast forward a bit in time, and Irregular Fever is now out. Robots are going rogue by the hundreds, (which turns into thousands), chaos is everywhere, and Bass and the others are in the middle of it all. After about a year of no incidents (except for one) from Wily, or anything catastrophic happening, Bass, Proto Man, and Mega Man go back to the grind of shooting robots and wrecking shop.

When they clear the first major wave of chipped robots, they (including Roll and Kalinka) are trying to figure out what the heck is happening. That's when Proto Man will go out on his own and research the cause of all of these robots going insane. He discovers that Irregular Fever is caused by these weird chips, along with the side effects, and he works with Dr. Light to inform the public about it (in this AU, they're now in good standing with each other).

After a bit more time passes, it soon becomes clear to our three main heroes that there's too many robot masters to take out, and that they're going to need some help, and to come up with a plan to deal with the Irregular Fever outbreak. This is where Kalinka and Roll come into the fighting scene:

Kalinka can't fight, as she's a human. However, she does become a navigator of some sort for them, using her father's computer in his lab to help locate and track the overseers and other rogue robot masters. Here's some concept art of that:

Listen, if she's going to possibly be up at all sorts of ungodly hours in the night, she might as well be comfortable in her own home while doing it. (I also drew her headphones to sort of look like those ear pieces on a robot master's armor, too!)

Oh, Dr. Cossack has no clue about his daughter doing all of this. At least, not yet, that is…

Roll, on the other hand, ends up creating her own armor and weapon to help join the fight! I drew her design in this post, along with an alternative design for Kalinka, but here it is again if anyone wants to see:

I forgot to draw her weapon, but I imagine that she has a grey and pink broom that she can transform into a hammer! I also like to think that she can downsize her broom/hammer into the size of a charm for a bracelet. :)

Unfortunately, at least one of them is going to get the chip (unwillingly). So that'll be fun for everyone else. I mean what-

That's about all for this post! If you read this far into it, then I'd honestly like to thank you, lol! I genuinely hope you enjoyed reading this!

As of the sequel, I might occasionally post small screenshots of chapters as I write them. I currently have about five and a half chapters done, and I'm trying to go for a backlog of twenty. With the rate I'm going at, you can probably expect to see chapters being uploaded to ao3 around June or so.

And now, I run away- 🏃‍♀️

God bless you! 🫶

#megaman #megaman classic #megaman au #megaman fanfic #dr. wily #bass megaman #rock light #roll megaman #proto man #blues megaman #kalinka cossack #kalinka megaman #zero megaman #how are we friends?#hawf #lore post #crystal talks #(a lot this time)

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