A/N: I saw a post on the Super Mario Wiki's forums using a passage from "Hope Rides Alone" by The Protomen as a prompt for a (never-to-be-written) fanfic. I just had to adapt the rest of the song (and tweak what was done already a bit) because it totally lends itself to a dystopian Mario reimagining - just like how The Protomen themselves portray the Mega Man series.

Hope Flies Alone

No one was left who could remember how it had happened,
How the lands had fallen under mushrooms.
At least no one who would do anything.
No one who would oppose the plumbers.
No one who would challenge their power,
Or so Princess Peach believed...

Twenty miles within the dark mountains of the kingdom,
Kamek lived in a run-down castle.
An eccentric and brilliant Koopa,
Kamek was a loner, a thinker, a wizard of ideas.
Ideas forbidden in Peach's society.
The society for which he worked.
The society in which he lived.
The society that he would set free.

And so Kamek worked, far into the night,
When the watchful eyes of Peach's plumbers weren't upon him.
He'd set his skillful spells to the task of creating a creature to bring about a change,
To create a Koopa to bring freedom,
To create a king to save the world.
For years Kamek worked, and on a cold night in 1985, Bowser was born.
A perfect boss, an unbeatable dragon,
Hell-bent on destroying every plumber standing between Koopas and freedom,
Hatched for one purpose: to destroy Peach's army of evil mushrooms.
Ready, willing, prepared to fight.

Sky Land
Grass Land
Water Land
Pipe Land
Desert Land
Ice Land
Giant Land
Attack!

And as the smoke cleared
Peach rose above the plumber brother's tag-team.
Bowser was wounded, short of firebreath,
Struggling to remain standing as Peach ordered the final attack.
The death of King Bowser.

The Koopas gathered there to watch him fall,
To watch their hopes destroyed.
They watched them burn him,
They watched them stomp him,
They watched his last shell spin deployed.
There was not a mook among them who would let himself be heard.
But from the troops, from their 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
We are the dead