Alright, I finally get to put my prologue up!

I own nothing but Jaden! Original quote from the Fallout 3 introduction, modified by me.

NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED


War.

War never changes.

Since the dawn of humankind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything from God, to justice, to simple psychotic rage.

In the year 1964, after years of hostilities between the communist Northern Vietnam and the democratic Southern Vietnam, attacks on American air bases, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war against communism in Northern Vietnam. On March 8th, 1965, 3,500 US Marines were sent to South Vietnam. Soon, the numbers rose to a total of 536,100 US men and women ready for armed combat. The majority of them were young men and women, some still in high school, or just barely out. Many of them went in as kids, happy, healthy, and willing to do anything to prove their worth, but they all came back as men and women, hardened from the death, violence, and hardships of war. 58,220 young men and women didn't make it back alive.

In the spring of 1972, Operation Linebacker was initiated, and the US Air Force began dropping bombs over North Vietnam.

In early June, Captain Jaden Whelan, and her wing of F-111 Aardvarks were sent out to bomb a Viet Cong base in the middle of North Vietnam. They were ordered to fly in close formation after dropping their load, which turned out to be the leading cause of the loss of their aircraft. One of the aircraft was shot, leading to mechanical failure, and caused the one aircraft to act like a lead domino, toppling it and the rest of them to the ground. All of the wing survived, and armed with only their intellect, they successfully made it back to Southern Vietnam. None of them were the same after that week, for what they had to do to get back home, none of them wanted to remember.

When Jaden returned home to Collinsport, Maine, she was hailed as a survivor, and a hero, for returning everyone alive. Celebrations were had, and some stories were told….all but one, the story of that fateful week. The people had taken notice of the change, from the happy, grinning girl without a care in the world; to the steel-faced woman, her body scarred from the horrors of war.

It is now mid-October in Collinsport, merely a week after the return of the Collins family business. Jaden took up the job of a fishmonger, gutting fish and cutting them to be ready to be canned. She passed by the Collins family home, Collinwood, on her way back from the nearby Air Base. And it is there, coincidentally, she was born. Her mother, a good friend of Elizabeth Stoddard-Collins, the family matriarch, had no idea she was even pregnant, and ended up giving birth to her daughter in her friend's home. And, coincidentally, it is there she will die.

For war….war never changes.