the wind echoing through the barren field pulls dust and memories. in the distance, is the city. burning, and warring with itself and sigma's armies. away from the city, children play. it is not safe in the city, and they fear the bombs. they are not to leave their homes, but they disobey. each time they play they stray further and further from the ruins of civilization, vowing to oneday leave. however, everytime they leave, they always come back. there is very little left in the world, and as a result of the war, this city is alone in a thousand miles. the children sing, and cough on the dust. burnt remnants of trees are all that remains of a great forest. this time, they came far enough to see the corpse of rock. he is crucified, an iron stake through each wrist, and hung as well onto the oak. they curios children approach the body with no fear. desensitized. they point, and laugh. the man who fought for nearly a hundred years... spending his entire life in vain to end a war that now ravages the world night and day. then, the children become violent. throwing stones, and swearing, blaming him for their loss of innocence. a particularly strong throw cut into rock's left arm, and severed his wrist. his body fell forwards, only held on by his other wrist and the aged rope around his neck. the children only laughed more. unable to support the weight, the rope tears. leaving the body only held on by one wrist, which, too soon gave out under the weight. rock's body collapsed to the dust at the base of the cross. the children resorted to stomping, and spitting on him now. they kept at this, until rock's devastated body moved. when he rolled over, and began to gasp, the children ran back to the city in fear of recourse. his chest heaved, and it took some time for his systems to become operational again. only at 24% capacity. he stood up, and immediately fell to his knees when the pain returned. tears streamed down his face, not for the pain, but for what he had done, close to ten years before...
what you would call a normal day in the lives of millions of people that would soon die. business as usual, until the bombs started to fall. the government responded, but was quickly outmatched by mechanated drones, roving the streets and killing randomly. the once great inventor, dr. wily, was again attempting to gain what he had never had- control. a long time ago, he worked side by side with dr light, and together they created many great inventions, each decades before their time. then, dr light began experiments on his own accord, his greatest. dr wily resented this, but did his best to keep his growing hate quiet. he waited--waited for the moment for light to turn his back and then he could stick the knife in. the moment grew nearer when wily discovered what light was doing. one of light's grandson's, william joanas, was recently struck by a truck. he would not live under current medical science. light took him in under request from the mother, his child, and finished his experiment... and turned william into a reploid. a new type of android, focusing on genuine human intelligence. from here to forth william would be know as 'protoman'. light and his family kept this as secret as they could. unbeknownst to them, wily knew. he then stole the technology, and created an army of six machines that would be unstoppable by man. when light discovered this, he had no other action but to send protoman to stop them. protoman was quickly defeated, and then dumped into an alley. light took all of the knowledge at his disposal, and turned william's brother into not a prototype, but a complete fighting machine. armed with only a small weapon on his left arm, james, nicknamed 'rock', was not only able to stop wily's army, but also win a showdown with wily himself. upon his defeat, wily begged for his life, and rock spared him. he was imprisoned. an unfortunate mistake, they chose never to tell rock what happened to his brother. he thought he died during surgery, and the family thought it was best this way. james had two sisters, one who was only two, and one his age. her name was crystal, but went by the nickname 'roll'. rock & roll were inseparable. but, nothind policing the streets 24-7. everything seemed fine. the people had entirely forgotten about reploids, and the sigma 206 virus. it wasn't long before the virus returned, however. the people could not understand why only some robots went haywire and the other's didn't. the dangerous robots were only the new models, and only a fraction of them went 'maverick'. a team of maverick hunters was born, to end the threat. it was headed by three reploids: x, zero, and their friend mac. the hunters kept the mavericks under control, unawares that they were starting an army of their own. the first war broke out no later then four years after x's discovery. the largest military machine prototype, code named coincidentally sigma, was the perfect main host for the virus. the hunters still did not know that it was a virus behind it all. this war culminated when zero nearly killed himself trying to save x. x immediately got revenge, by killing a clone of the sigma machine that he thought was the original. once again, rock and wily were fighting. their second war was their most destructive yet. x and a band of hunters were frantically searching for zero's parts, before sigma could take them and corrupt them. a maverick zero would be almost impossible to stop. x again won, and destroyed another clone of sigma. their third war was in though to finally be their last. x and zero were fighting together, even though mac had to be destroyed. along the way, zero's power generator took a severe hit, and he was down. x took on sigma in his new Kaiser suit, and once again won. this was the end of the war... the virus now left the body and came after x. after a long chase through the burning base, x was corered. As the virus approached, zero crashed through the ceiling and destroyed it with cain's new antivirus. it proved quite effective... that clone of the virus was killed, why not the rest? that was the plan... but their fourth war was the end of times as we now know them.
the sigma virus, sensing it's danger, went into full attack mode now. almost every single reploid was infected... even most of the maverick hunters. sigma was bold enough to walk the streets now, facing little opposition. in the middle of the street, sigma and x faced off, for what would be the last time. x lost. sigma tossed his damaged body like a toy. sigma ordered cain dead, and marched off with x's body. he stripped it of it's enhancements, and crucified it nearly a mile out of the city. each stake tearing into x's body drew a thousand tears from the people. when the rope was tightened, the future of the earth was sealed, forever to be ruled by the mavericks. james joanas was at long last dead.
rock's battered body again stumbled to it's feet, and opened his eyes. his saw a dark brown sky, poisoned by toxic fumes and stained with death. the field he was crucified in was burned beyond recognition, but upon further notice, he saw that most of the world had the same fate. in the distance, he saw the city. burning, and warring. he tried to move, but found it difficult to with his damaged systems. it took him several days to cover the distance it took the children to cover in minutes. when his reached there, the were massive machines, storming the streets with fire and lead. a confused rock stared at the devastation. a man wrapped his arm around him, and dragged his body into one of the many underground camps. when he saw that he got a reploid and not a human, he was very quick to decide to destroy it. a woman stopped him, she recognized him. "X?" He said doubtfully, "How can it be? sigma destroyed him nearly ten years ago!" upon further examination, they realized they could help him. they repaired enough of his systems so that he could fix the rest. he had lost his suit, stripped of his fighting powers by sigma, but he still had zero's saber. he managed an ak-47 from the pieces in the shop. with this, he began his revenge. storming the streets, killing reploids left and right. he gained enough of their pieces to understand their new design. he pointed out to the survivors the main chip that powered them... and the easiest way to destroy it. he was able to complete several new weapons for himself, once and forever a machine of war. when sigma realized who it was, he immediately sent out his death squads. one by one, they all succumbed to rock's rage. in each of their death's he gained power. rock selectively destroyed pieces of sigma's fortress before entering it. after several solid days of pure fighting inside, he was facing down the original war machine that sigma infected. consumed with hate, rock dropped it quite violently and with little difficulty. then, he approached the terminal. in this computer was the original sigma virus, from so many deaths ago. unbeknownst to the virus, rock had planted several subnuclear explosives inside the compound. the virus at first, of course, threatened x.
"it's over, wily." rock said in a cold tone.
"it can't be?! rock! i thought..."
"nothing you can do can destroy me. i-i'm sick of this, wily. again, you have gone too far."
The virus remained quiet, but planned it's next methods of attack.
then, rock removed his new suit and said, "We both know you are a different virus. the clone of yourself is unable to further infect any other machines. your own safely mechanism. but, you are the original, if i destroy you, then the humans will eventually win."
the machine made some weak noise, then responded, "goddamn you... if you would've just given in in the first fucking place i would've never had to kill so many!"
rock became violent, "there's a solution... why fight for freedom when we could live under the rule of a sick little man... you know what wily? i'm too tired. i wont' destroy that machine. you can live. for as long as you very fucking well want too. you've killed my father, my sisters, my brother, my friends, and so many millions of others. i'm too weak now to kill you." rock fell to his knees and opened his breast plate. the virus began to immediately take control of rock's body, "let it end..." were rock's final words before he pressed the button, and blew five miles of land straight to hell. thus finally destroying wily, and himself in the process.
he never knew love, all he knew was death. he was a machine of pain, living for eternity only to kill. with wily's death, the reploids could no longer infect each other with the sigma virus. eventually, after many more deaths, human's emerged from the rubble. there was nothing left, only the option to rebuild. they did find the remains of sigma's fortress, completely reduced to ashes, and with it, rock. he lived nearly a thousand years, conscious for less than two hundred of them, and fighting all the way. he hated his life, and feared his death. now, he was finally at peace. with his family, with zero, and with cain.