Disclaimer: Mega Man does not belong to me. Also, the Infinite Loops as a whole aren't my idea. They were started by Innortal and later codified by Saphroneth, this is just my personal jump into what has become a reasonably large fanfiction community with something resembling shared continuity.
Loop mechanics (general):
One person in a Loop, often the main character, is an Anchor. They are the person who first starts time looping.
There is always at least one Anchor present in a given Time Loop snippet, though it may not be the local one.
The standard pattern for a loop is that the Anchor (and whoever else is Looping there) come to awareness in a loop at a particular point in the story. From there, events will play out as influenced by the Loopers present, acting with the benefit of their foreknowledge, until either a predetermined end point is reached or all the Loopers have copped it.
To be Awake is to be aware of the time loops (that is, to have gone back in time this time.)
The Anchor is the only character guaranteed to be Awake. Even after others have started looping, it is mostly random as to whether they will be Awake this particular loop.
Crossovers, fusions, and alternate pasts can also take place. It is perfectly possible, for example, to have the characters Awaken into a loop which conforms to a fanfic universe rather than reality.
Loops do not have to be in chronological order, but it is strongly preferred that they not require a mutually contradictory order (where A must be before B and B must be before A.)
Just about every Looper is very, very stir crazy.
Tvtropes Page: tvtropes. o r g (slash) pmwiki/ pmwiki . php/ Fanfic/ TheInfiniteLoops
Backstory: The Loops began as a last-ditch failsafe when an event of unknown origin, even to the gods, hit Yggdrasil, the world tree and divine computer that runs all of reality. And while the admins do their best to repair something that has never needed this level of repair before, Yggdrasil's depleted resources try to hold back the proliferation of bugs, malware, and even eldritch reality viruses that were formerly contained by the healthy system. But... Not every Loop was hit equally by this event. Some, like Eiken, managed to escape damage to the point where they do not require an Anchor to keep running. Others... others were hit even harder than most and suffered more damage as a result. In these more damaged Loops the rules that govern them are affected by data corruption, resulting in bizarre circumstances that sometimes do not exist elsewhere.
And the branch of Yggdrasil containing the Mega Man multiverse was hit harder than any other known Loop.
Attempting Loop Activation:
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 1 using primary Anchor candidate:
Rock shook his head as he suddenly experienced a glut of memory errors. Entire years worth. Just like...
No, he'd never experienced something like this before... Why would he think he had?
It didn't matter. Dr. Wily had stolen Dr. Light's robot masters and attacked the city. Since he had been about the only thing outside Wily's control, he'd volunteered to be converted into a fighting robot and stop the mad doctor's plans. And possibly get him psychiatric help once he captured him.
The gate in front of him slid up and he beheld his opponent.
"Took you long enough," the orange robot master glared. "I thought you might have chickened out. But the Glue Gun of Bond Man will make certain you stick around... forever!"
Bond Man? No, that wasn't right... It was supposed to be 71#3 # &*$ #!%^...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 2 using primary Anchor candidate:
Rock still hadn't figured out what was up with his memory banks. He seemed to have spontaneously gained at least one redundant copy of events prior to actually living them, except it had been hopelessly corrupted and unreliable. After all, Dr. Wily had used a space station rather than the garish castle his false memories suggested. And for whatever reason, those memories were locked out from being overwritten.
Very odd.
But Rock's memory problems didn't change the fact that he needed to free the Chronos Institute from Dr. Wily's control.
"Well, look who decided to show up!" his own voice came from behind him.
Whirling around, Rock came face to face with... Copy Robot? Where was Qu!|\|7?VFRF[}%...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 3 using primary Anchor candidate:
Rock honestly felt like the universe was off somehow. In addition to what might have been multiple sets of corrupted memories of events he both had and hadn't lived, all of the robot masters seemed to be musically inclined.
Sure, the instrumentals were catchy and the songs were quite good, but the whole practice just seemed somehow... wrong.
Like what he was hearing as he climbed towards his confrontation with Gamma.
Gamma, stand for you are now unchained (You are now unchained)
You'll bring peace to our world gone insane
Restoring your freedom to make you whole (You are now unchained)
I'll give you power, you'll take control
All systems online
g:\GAMMA\sys/activation
g:\[peacekeeping]/calculation…
g:\…[solution\extermin 7!0|\|%$W6% 8...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 4 using primary Anchor candidate:
Rock had no time for this. He didn't know how he had memories of fighting this giant crane game reject when he'd never encountered it before, but he really didn't care so long as they helped him finish this quickly.
Severing the thick cable holding the machine up, he rode it to the ground and ripped off the canopy, only to freeze at the sight of the occupant.
"Kalinka?!" he stared incredulously at the young girl, looking like she hadn't slept or bathed in days. "Where's Dr. Cos$ [|#?#$%^ ...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 5 using primary Anchor candidate:
Rock had no idea what to think. Everything seemed to be going along according to the partial memory errors he'd received, except that he was a character in a video game. And apparently aware of it. Then some kid left his system on and, impossibly, Dr. Wily escaped into the outer world and Rock followed. Then Dr. Wily somehow caused a bunch of smaller robots to coalesce into a giant robot master-type thing.
Then things got weird.
"Because I..." declared Dr. Wily dramatically, throwing off his labcoat and revealing a dark-colored gi with mesh underneath, "...am a ninja!"
Seriously... What the heck was g01|\|&}nftwG%$Ydft4s5#$^...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 6 using primary Anchor candidate:
Rock was rather enjoying the World Robot Tournament. Sure, fellow robot masters were fighting, but it wasn't with him or to the death. It was, all things considered, a welcome change.
Even if those weird memory errors of his insisted the semi-finalists were supposed to be different.
"The first of eight semi-finalists!" the announcer boomed. "Built by the Comic Irregulars of Australia!"
"CHEDDAR MONK!"
The crowd roared with approval as the robed robot lifted its orange beam saber in70 743 A!&EVy6f4y6er^V&^9*t...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 7 using primary Anchor candidate:
"Watch out," Rock told his partner. "There's no telling what Dr. Wily's newest robot will try to pull."
"Understood," Tempo replied as he opened the door.
Rock silently counted his blessings that Tempo had started to help him in his fight against Dr. Wily since they met at the expo – even if the 'hints' his sister kept dropping that they should be a couple tended to be fairly annoying. Taking on the various threats that just seemed to keep cropping up without her help would have been a great deal harder. He knew this for a fact since he seemed to have partial memory errors of another life where he'd done just that.
Of course, the robot they were about to face rather flew in the face of those strange false memories himself.
"Well, well," growled the bipedal wolf robot Treble. "If it isn't the dynamic duo." At Treble's side sneered his animalistic and strangely quadrupedal humanoid companion Bass. "I suppose we'll have to put those new upgrades to the test. Come on Bass!"
Treble and Bass leaped into the air, glowing with energy as they began their combining sequence...
...and reality froze.
'What?' Rock thought to himself in confusion. Treble and Bass simply hung in midair, completely frozen. Rock himself couldn't seem to move either. 'What's happen!|\|&vve676v$%32% c24...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 8 using primary Anchor candidate:
"MWA HA HA HA HA HA HA! PEOPLE OF THE WORLD BEHOLD! I know it may be a bit sudden, but I hereby announce the commencement of my eighth plot to take over the world!" the sunglasses-wearing Dr. Wily declared over the pirated television broadcast, revealing his newest line of robot masters.
The entire world stared united in stupefied silence.
"Using the power of interpretive dance!"
Rock tried to reboot his neural net. 'What is this... I don'7 3^3|\|...
ATTEMPT FAILED
Yggdrasil Log: Loop activation attempt 9 using primary Anchor candidate:
Rock was wary. He had woken up one day with a slew of memory errors depicting multiple separate lives that he'd apparently already lived. The ones that seemed the oldest, if such a concept could truly be applied to them, got rather corrupted towards the end before becoming completely unreadable, but he had a feeling they were somehow important.
The others were a combination of similar or odd variations of the original up to a point where something incredibly strange happened and the universe just... crashed. Like a computer running a faulty program.
The events happened later and later, one for each set of robot masters Dr. Wily had used. As he was currently dealing with the ninth set of robot masters, Rock was on edge, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And as he entered the area where Fake Man should be, he knew that it was about to happen. Because instead of Fake Man, there was a bound Dr. Light in the room.
Rock was prepared for just about anything, up to and including the whole room suddenly turning into a three-ring circus where clown cars tried to run him over. Thus he was rather stunned when he managed to cross the room and start to free Dr. Light without incident.
"Are you okay Dr. Light?" he asked his creator, still frantically scanning the room for anything weird.
"Oh, I'm just fine," the doctor said in a voice that very clearly wasn't that of Dr. Light.
Rock's jumpiness was all that managed to save him. He was so keyed up that he backed off as fast as possible at the first un-Dr. Light sound out of the impostor's mouth and just barely managed to avoid a Metal Blade that would have taken his head off. He stared as the impostor peeled off Dr. Light's face to reveal the face of a robot he was quite familiar with.
"Old Doc Robot's just PEACHY!" the skull-faced multi-weapon robot master yelled as he attacked.
In a way, Rock was kind of relieved. Now that the bizarre event was out of the way, he could focus on finding the real Dr. L![]-+\=}"/...
ATTEMPT FAILED
PRIMARY ANCHOR CANDIDATE DEEMED UNVIABLE DUE TO SUCCESSIVE FAILURES
ADDITIONAL PRIMARY ANCHOR CANDIDATES CURRENTLY UNRECOVERABLE
PROCEEDING TO SECONDARY ANCHOR CANDIDATE
Attempt 1) Bond Man was actually intended to be included in the original Mega Man, but they cut the number of robot masters in the game down to six before the eighth could even be designed.
Attempt 2) I actually like the idea of Quint. He was a very poorly handled character in my opinion. Personally, I think he's yet another clone of Rock using futuristic technology programmed to think he's the real thing. It's not like Wily hasn't proven to be more capable of that than kidnapping and reprogramming Mega Man or anything...
Attempt 3) The Megas rock. That is all.
Attempt 4) I'm just as confused as Rock is. I swear, this stuff comes out of my brain without consulting me first.
Attempt 5) Megaman: Upon A Star. I share Rock's opinion of the events depicted. And they go exactly like that in the material referenced.
Attempt 6) So... I may be a fan of the Darths and Droids webcomic...
Attempt 7) Tempo/Quake Woman is one of the original characters from the Archie comics. She's also one of the few female robot masters around, and the only one so far not made by Dr. Light, so Roll tends to be Shipper On Deck for Tempo and Rock.
Also a fatal reality glitch seems to have occurred with Treble and Bass.
Attempt 8) Gigamix (the best of the Megaman mangas in my opinion) Wily to start with (and he looks damn cool in those shades of his). Though he certainly took a turn for the bizarre there. Can you imagine Frost Man trying to do ballet?
Attempt 9) Rock is remembering the failed Loop activation attempts. This shouldn't be possible.