Great Repliforce War

The Great Repliforce War (レプリフォース大戦) is a major conflict of the Maverick Wars, fought between the Repliforce and the Maverick Hunters during the events of Mega Man X4. The two factions were originally allies until Sigma manipulated the events that put the two "at each other's throats": framed for the destruction of a city and labeled Mavericks, the proud Repliforce announced their independence and the Maverick Hunters were ordered to stop the coup.

The Great Repliforce War is marked for both its moral ambiguity and for being fought in a greater personal level compared to previous Maverick uprisings; pride turned friendships into bitter rivalries and former friends fought to the death. Feelings of guilt would plague survivors of the war, even leading to a change of management in the Maverick Hunters.

Beginning
Sigma makes his first attempt at inciting enmity by trying to convince the General of Repliforce that the Maverick Hunters are a threat, painting them as the humans' puppets. When his arguments are rejected by General, Sigma convinces the combative 14th Unit member Magma Dragoon to betray the Hunters for a chance to fight Mega Man X. Using the Mechaniloid Eregion as well as a group of Mavericks with lethal high-tech weaponry, Dragoon incites chaos and destruction in the aerial city of Sky Lagoon, luring the Repliforce there and making them seem responsible for the attack itself. Just as the Hunters arrive to investigate, Dragoon causes Sky Lagoon to crash, leading to innumerable casualties.

Although Zero finds Iris in the area and rescued her in due time, her brother Colonel arrives to save her. Colonel refuses to disarm and follow the Hunters to HQ under suspicion of Maverick behavior. This leads to the humans and the Maverick Hunter Command Center labeling the entire Repliforce as a Maverick army.

The Coup
Indignant at the accusations, General announces the independence of Repliforce, swearing to build a Reploid-only nation. The Repliforce launches their coup with full force, occupying several cities and carrying out a number of military operations:
 * Web Spider and Frost Walrus oversee the construction of secret weapons at their Jungle and Snow Bases.
 * Storm Owl commands the Air Force.
 * Jet Stingray destroys a city and escapes to their Marine Base at the sea.
 * Slash Beast defends the Repliforce's supply route aboard their military train.

Some Repliforce soldiers in Ride Armor were also stationed at the volcano where Magma Dragoon was hiding out after he turned traitor and went to work for them. The Hunters are immediately scrambled to combat Repliforce, with X and Zero fighting in the front lines. The two Hunters take on each Repliforce unit and come to blows with Colonel, their pleas to stop the coup unheard. Even though Magma Dragoon is destroyed and the truth behind Sky Lagoon revealed, it is far too late to dissuade Repliforce.

Due in large part to X and Zero, most of the Repliforce units are destroyed, but the Repliforce ups the ante by assembling at the Space Port. Colonel dies in battle with the Hunters, giving Repliforce the time needed to migrate to their Final Weapon in space, where they hope to establish their own nation. X and Zero quickly invade the Final Weapon, but X's subordinates in the 17th Elite Unit are assassinated by Sigma's spy Double, who is destroyed by X while a distraught Iris perishes during a quarrel with Zero, prior to the eventual confrontation with the General himself.

It is during the fight with General that the Final Weapon is taken over by Sigma and set to fire at the Earth. Although Sigma is defeated, the Final Weapon can no longer be stopped. Finally realizing his foolishness, the General uses his own body to jam the weapon and cause its complete destruction while tragically sacrificing himself in the process, saving both the Earth and its inhabitants from the Final Weapon.

Aftermath
The war ends with a bittersweet victory for the Maverick Hunters and the Repliforce decimated, but not entirely wiped out. The Maverick Hunter commander retires out of guilt, being replaced by Signas, while the remnants of the Repliforce eventually relocate to an airport base near the west coast of Norway and rename themselves as the Reploid Air Force, led by Spiral Pegasus, the former director of Repliforce's air brigade. Zero was ultimately haunted by Iris's demise as well as his role in it, and continued to do so for a while, while X, largely due to disturbances relating to Sigma and Double's words to him, attempted to make Zero promise to him that, in the event that X did end up becoming a Maverick, he is to "take care" of him, though Zero was hesitant to agree to it. Months later, what remains of the Reploid Air Force is infected by the Sigma Virus during the Earth Crisis, along with their commander Pegasus, leaving the Hunters no choice but to terminate them. The former leader of the Repliforce Disaster Prevention team, Burn Dinorex, is killed by the Maverick Hunters after refusing to hand over a rocket Booster Engine necessary for the Space Shuttle and insisting on fighting them. It is unknown if he had succumbed to the virus, however. After the fall of Eurasia and the Nightmare Incident, one Reploid founded his own Maverick hunting organzation, which was invariably manipulated by Sigma.

Sightings of battleships with the Repliforce symbol were documented one century after the Elf Wars, in use by Neo Arcadia's Deep Sea Squadron.

Rockman X4 manga


In the manga version of Mega Man X4, Rockman X4, the Repliforce appears as exactly the same type of group in the game: a military organization of Reploids who fight Maverick threats and occasionally assist the Maverick Hunters. The General is their leader, and the Colonel is their primary field commander. Colonel's sister, Iris, works for Repliforce as a nurse, although she treats both enemies and allies.

In the manga, the Repliforce had been around for considerably longer than in the game where they had only existed for a few months. The manga version of them has existed all the way back before Sigma launched his first rebellion against humanity, during which time the Colonel encountered Zero during a mission and befriended him. However, the group did not assist the Maverick Hunters in quelling the rebellion as the Repliforce had less authority, which drew criticism from the public.

When the Maverick Mechaniloid Eregion decimates a city and causes many casualties, Double from the 17th Elite Unit of the Maverick Hunters finds a piece of equipment with Repliforce's insignia on it next to the Maverick's corpse, and accuses the Repliforce of having engineered the incident. Colonel is snared with electrical chains from a hunter's gun, and Zero, who had just saved Colonel's sister Iris from the Mechaniloid, then asks Colonel for an explanation. He angrily breaks free of the chain, and refuses to disarm, saying it would be dishonorable to do so for a soldier such as himself.

The public is incensed at the fact that Repliforce could be involved, and many humans protest for a reduction of their troop size. The Maverick Hunters decide that Repliforce will be disarmed and temporarily disbanded until the investigation of their actions is complete. However, the day before that was supposed to happen, Repliforce blimps and airships appear across the sky, broadcasting a message to humans from the General at the Repliforce Memorial Hall. Indigant at being accused of Mavericks after working so hard to support humanity, the General announces they will become an independent organization, and that they have already occupied many areas and main roads to aid in their rebellion. He says they shall fight to the end. This causes the government to declare the Repliforce as Mavericks.

After the Repliforce announces this coup d'etat, Zero pretends to go along with Repliforce's rebellion in order to find Colonel, and goes as far as to slash X with his saber to sell the act.

The Repliforce is portrayed as much more vicious and depraved in the manga, using utterly ruthless methods in the name of independence. Web Spider slaughters a battalion of Maverick Hunters who went to investigate Repliforce's hidden beam cannon in the jungle, which he was planning to use to burn down a nearby city full of humans before being confronted and killed by X, saving the city. Frost Walrus also slaughtered a squad of Maverick Hunters, and kept their dead bodies encased in ice as a sick part of his "collection". He later released several Maverick Hunter prisoners and told them to run for their lives, all so he could viciously kill each of them with his ice powers, save one, who was saved by X and Blizzard Buffalo, who was reformed in the manga as a hunter. Slash Beast savagely killed one of his own Repliforce subordinates in anger after he reported to Beast that one of their trains had been stopped by the Maverick Hunter Zero.

Walrus fights both X and Buffalo at the same time, and ultimately kills the latter who stepped in to save an injured X. X fights Walrus again, and injures him with the fuel tank of a Ride Armor, but Walrus again gains the upper hand and is about to kill X before the General steps in and shoots down Walrus as punishment for earlier misconduct such as starting riots unrelated to the Repliforce's coup and mercilessly slaughtering a battalion of Maverick Hunters and Reploids he had taken prisoner.

X, after gaining the Ultimate Armor from the Kagikira Forest, becomes much more powerful, bloodthirsty warrior, enough to effortlessly kill Slash Beast with a single charged shot, who according to X begged for his life before his death. Later, Storm Owl, and the entirety of the Repliforce air brigade that he commanded, are brutally shot down near a volcano by a vengeful X. As he lays dying, he curses the fact that humans have more power than Reploids in his opinion, due to their ability to get Reploids deemed Maverick as they see fit, without due process. He curses X, saying that "you are the true Maverick!" and then X then abruptly kills him with a charged buster shot, and tells Owl that he was a Maverick and the humans made no mistake in deeming Repliforce as such, unaware of the real culprit behind the Repliforce war.

Jet Stingray of the Repliforce navy fights with Zero at the sea, and the former is killed by a surprise attack from the Reploid Self-Defense Forces, along with the rest of his Repliforce subordinates, while Zero survives after being rescued by Iris.

Zero fights the Colonel twice, with the first battle interrupted by Iris who threatened to commit suicide if they didn't stop fighting, which led to the battle being a draw. The second time they fight, Zero is forced to kill Colonel in self-defense, just like in the game, and he is forced to fight Iris as well who had unwillingly bonded with her brother's remains and become a dangerous Ride Armor type Reploid. Zero destroys the armor and pulls her out of it, but unfortunately, she had already been mortally wounded due to the fact of Colonel's death. In the manga, Colonel and Iris share a special link such that damage to one sibling is extended to the other, as seen when Zero sliced off Colonel's right arm in their second battle which in turn causes Iris's right arm to corrode.

X battles the General and seriously injures him at the Repliforce space station. In the end, Double reveals that he planted the evidence at the scene of Eregion's death to frame Repliforce for it, under Sigma's orders. X then kills Double, and General sacrifices himself to save humanity from the Death Flower satellite's beam weapon. Some Repliforce soldiers survive the incident and then leave in peace.

Notes and Trivia

 * The term "Great Repliforce War" was coined by Mega Man X: Official Complete Works.
 * Keiji Inafune wanted some moral leeway in the story of Mega Man X4, with the Repliforce not coming across as an evil presence like Sigma does. The point was to show that good and evil are not always as clear as people would like them to be.