Hope Rides Alone

No one was left who could remember how it had happened, how the world had fallen under darkness

At least no one who would do anything

No one who would oppose the robots

No one who would challenge their power

Or so Dr. Wily believed

Twenty Floors above the dark streets of the city, Dr. Light lived in a run-down tenement

An eccentric and brilliant man

Light was a loner, a thinker, a man of ideas

Ideas forbidden in Wily's society

The society for which he worked

The society in which he lived

The society that he would set free

And so Light worked, far into the night, when the watchful eyes of Wily's robots weren't upon him

He'd set his skillful hands to the task of creating a device to bring about a change, to create a machine to bring freedom, to create a man to save the world

Twelve years Light worked and on a cold night in the year 200X, Protoman was born

A perfet man, an unbeatable machine, hell-bent on destroying every evil standing between man and freedom, built for one purpose, to destroy Wily's army of evil robots. Ready, willing, prepared to fight

Cutman

Gutsman

Elecman

Bombman

Fireman

Iceman

Proto

Fireman

Attack!

Fight

And as the smoke cleared

Wiley rose above the countless robots remaining

Protoman was wounded, low on energy

Struggling to remain standing as Wily ordered the final attack

The death of Protoman

The crowd had gathered there to watch him fall, to watch their hopes destroyed

They watched them beat him

They watched them break him

They watched his last defense deployed

There was not a man among them who would let himself be heard

But from the crowd, from the collective fear, arose these broken words

We are the dead

We are the dead

(What have we done?)

We are the dead

(What will we do?)

We are the dead

(Where will we turn?)

We are the dead

(Is there nothing we can do?)

We are the dead

(How did it come to this?)

We are the dead

(How did we go so wrong?)

We are the dead

We are the dead