Mega Man Zero Crossover? · 10:19pm Apr 20th, 2016
DestrinBriar's Blade of the Void is one of my favorite fics ever. X was cool, but Zero had more personality. The body design in the MMZ series was kinda hit or miss to me, until they started showing some art(Or fans made their own). But the music! OH THE MUSIC!
There are very few Mega Man fics on this site, that are complete anyway. A very small part of me wants to rectify this. A very large part of me realizes I don't have the chops to do it justice. I have come up with a very loose outline, that only encompasses Zero getting to Equestria, repairing, and meeting Celestia.
But, before any off this happens, if ever, I need to figure out how to deal with some things. Like, namely, the source material is a freaking game! http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GameplayAndStorySegregation
Let's ignore who Zero is for a bit and focus more on what he is and one would actually try and write.
1) Dashing
When this was introduced in Mega Man X, it was an amazing mechanic, and still is. From a gameplay perspective anyway. From a logic standpoint...what does it even do?
For air dashing the whole jetboots thing makes sense, but along the ground?? The sprites show them leaning extremely far forwards, on their tippy toes! It's like a ballerina standing up in her special shoes and farting as propulsion.
Best I can come up with is to use the original description from MMX1:Emergency Acceleration Engine. What it actually does is overclock the robots servos/artificial musculature to move a lot faster, but is dangerous to overuse. Jetboots could stay for air dashing, but then Zero has that stupid double jump...
2)Teleportation
Leaning towards Zero not being able to teleport.
In the series the 'bots have been able to beam out of whatever "Level" they were in. One would logically conclude that each one had a teleportation device in their schematics. And maybe this was true for earlier generations.
Schematics are very cluttered, it makes sense to periodically dump what isn't needed anymore. Perhaps the biggest indicator of this is the MMZ series, and specifically Zero 2. Zero has to stop a bombing force heading towards their base. he does so, and then orders Ciel to TransServer in once it's safe.
This is important because Ciel is one of the VERY few humans we see in the whole freaking franchise. She wouldn't have a teleporter built in, or even added surgically; she's 14-15! This series added in said TransServer, which do exactly that;Transport you data to another location, which doesn't always require a said location. Thus I would argue that Reploids have an internal beacon, while supercomputers didn't the teleportation. Events between X and Zero caused them to switch to TransServers.
3)Subtanks and 4) Self Repair Systems (These are tied pretty close together, while still remaining distinct I think.)
In most games, there is a way to regain or regenerate health, armor, whatever they use, but it's usually abstracted. A critical might leave you without an arm or a spleen, yet nanobots/healing magic/noming some blood can fix that right up! And that's fine, in video games.
In most other forms of fiction however, drawbacks are required. Maybe magic can restore an arm, but it's typically high level magic. Maybe you can't cast anything on an individual until you've properly set their bones or removed an arrowhead. This doesn't even get into the fact that our protagonist is a robot, potentially millennia ahead of any technology Equestria has, and repairs spells likely require a basic understanding of the object in question.
So either Zero has to be completely overpowered, able to take on Nightmare Moon or Tirek without a scratch because he can't afford to take a hit, or he's completely helpless against magic, gets torn to pieces with no chance of recovery, and the story is dull.
In the games health is an abstract concept. You can take X amount of damage before you die, and as long as you have Y health your gameplay isn't affected. Mega Man X introduced(or at least made standard) subtanks. Enemy robots when destroyed could yield health packs, and if you ran over them while at full health, the excess energy would instead go to a subtank, ready and willing to save you when Sigma went Gundam on your tin behind.
But how do you make this make sense in a story and make it interesting to read? I think the answer is more or less a copout AND a copout:Star Trek replicators, and a quip from Zero himself.
In the canon end of X5 X and Zero defeated Sigma and are yakking away when Sigma reactivated and fire and energy weapon at the two of them. Zero threw X out of the way, lost his legs and arm, made a quip, and destroyed Sigma with one final blast.
3 weeks later X is doing some investigating when Zero shows up with the line:"I hid while I repaired myself."
So my thinking is that subtanks are an expansion to a Reploid's AutoRepair systems;they store reserve power until repairs are need, then transforms the energy into required materials and sends them to the repair systems. I will like have to ignore any autoheal chips they added or handwave them as supplemental energy generators/accumulators.
5) Energy
This one I have figured out for the most part, but the Energon(sp?) crisis of the Zero series is part of it. Energon is the fuel used in Reploid's micro fusion cores. Some older models can use solar as well, but only for low output activities, and thanks to centuries of war, very few of them are made.
So any other issues you can see? Is this something you would want to see? Got ideas? let me know in the comments!
You don't have to do a straight up crossover. You can write a story that is pony, but carries some elements and flavor of Mega Man - make it an original story but with influences of other things. With your brain surgery experience, you can throw in a good bit of science about cyborgs. Being ponies, there can be a science vs. magic debate.
It could be a really cool story.
3892383 True. I do have maybe 4 ideas floating around in my head, though I doubt I will write them all.
1) Discord gets free, doesn't chaos everything up, explains how disharmonious ponies are on their own. If you wanna steal that it's fine. There are a couple bits of logic that are shaky, and I doubt I have the ability to make it a good read.
2)Dirty self insert. Extremely doubt I'd actually put this to paper, so to speak. More just trying to run some ideas through my head, work though some issues. Psychologists are too expensive, plus I doubt they'd work for me, even if there was one close by.
3 and 4 I can't get past the first chapter or 4. While it would be interesting, and maybe fun, to write my own epic, I have no plan. And I hear that's bad.
3) The Zero cross over, though you do bring up a good point...
4)A HiE where the main character is a telepath/telekinetic. Young girl, about 12, gets attacked, wished to be anywhere but where she is, ended up 'porting to Equestria. About the only points I've drafted out in my head are:she burns out her mind, reverting her to an infant once she wakes up. Losing the skill to shield her mind, being around ponies causes her pain. (ESPECIALLY Pinkie) Likely with a infodump at the beginning then a time skip. Heavily inspired by Voice Among the Strangers