waow okies this is our fucked up mecha/infection au :D (FUMI? FUMI's not a horrible tag but we're open to name suggestions)
Plspls send asks abt this AU, we have so much planned :3
More details down below! CW: Character Death, Infection, Self-Neglect (Kinda? Just to be safe)
anyways so the whole premise of this au is just a self-indulgent thingy where society collapsed bc of big spread of infection that turned almost the entire population into mindless drones. Yaaaaaay... Anyways yeags ig like the first instinct would be like "lmao just get the mechs to beat up the drones, right? gg ez" yeah no it doesn't work like that
ok so a lot of mecha storylines involve whoever pilot getting really deeply connected with their mech, right? Something something Protocol 1: Link to Pilot- ANYWAYS so since this whole thing is starting in the transformers universe, basically there's a whole arms race to see who can get the more powerful mechs first. Bc of this, nobody really puts the right safety rails for how connected the mech and the pilot can be, so obviously they're gonna try and get as connected as possible. Better symbiosis = Better synergy = Higher chance for survival
The only problem is: There comes a certain point where the mech and the pilot get so connected that they become a single unit. The way we're running it for now, is that connection is facilitated by nanobots or whatever that get injected into the pilot's body and multiplies inside until it reaches a good threshold. Eventually the pilot loses all control over themselves, and they basically just become a mobile unit for the mech.
So this isn't just bad for the pilot, it's also bad for the mech. It's been connecting so well with its pilot lately but "oh no! The pilot vanished while they were in the cockpit! D: This is bad news, where pilot go? Hmmm... Gonna need to find a new pilot at least temporarily. Oh hello new mobile unit that happens to be in the cockpit! Where'd you come from? Whatever, that's a question for the pilot. Go my scarab" and now suddenly there's a mindless drone wandering around, looking for any other humans to be a temporary pilot
The pilot themselves will start to show symptoms of slipping away weeks before actually losing themselves. They'll become more reliant on the mech to the extent where they spend more and more time with it, isolating themselves from the people around them. They'll be able to take care of themselves, but only by the bare minimum. If people try to separate the pilot from the mech, they will react defensively, if not outright violently against them. There's a whole other system of infection that can happen though, but that'll be addressed in a future post
Anyways! So the infection spreads by any sort of contact with nanobots. There's another big system for that that'll also come up in the next post, but for now: All that matters is that the drone's goal is to connect with a temporary pilot. In order to do that, they'll need to get the host mech's nanobots onto or into another person's body. Fun stuff!
Hooh ok that's a lot of information- Plspls send in an ask if you have any questions or wanna know abt certain people inside the AU since we're ABSOLUTELY adding more people to this. As for the conditions of these guys for when the story actually starts: