Prologue:

-''Under the Knife''-

-New Alexandria, Montana-

-11 May 2014-

-0411 Hours-

God never puts us through more than we can handle...for the longest time, this is all we've been told, what we've believed. We held the belief that things would never be harder for us than what we can handle...and yet the things we've had to go through are enough to break even the most emotionally stable man. Whenever we think we overcome one struggle, another, harder one surfaces, and once more we find ourselves on the brink of submission and surrender. So why, then, do we suffer so greatly? Is it because of our resilience? Is it because the mutation serum we, as Alpha Company of the Terminator Militia, are given? Something that makes us so powerful, able to take and deal a lot? Or is this punishment for our sins, and our way of life?

Every test we've been given we passed with flying colors, and yet...as they get harder and harder, the road becomes even rockier. Our golden age ended with the Second American Civil War, waged on us by the forty-second president of the United States, a man named Barry Mabao, who turned our longtime allies against us. After three years of suffering, we finally ended up the victors of the war. Even through all our struggles: first the GTC, then the LKA, then the Maxia, the Brotherhood, the Caeda, and Zack Dawson's Neo-Maxian Republic, we never surrendered, we never gave in, and we kept our chins high, holding firmly to the belief that the road was getting harder as we neared the end of the suffering.

Now, the world seems to be getting even darker for us. Our leader, our friend, our brother, Alex Vaughn, founder and commander of the Terminator Militia, lays dying on an operating table, and the surgeons attending him are struggling to keep him alive...

My name is Ruby, I am a common bottlenose dolphin, one of the newer recruits here...and that young man struggling to hold on to the last threads of life on the table in the room before me is my mate. He is the sole reason why I'm still alive today, and it was the thought and memory of him, of seeing him again, being reunited with him, that helped me survive through my long years of torture and containment as a governmental guinea pig. What I feel right now is only matched by what I felt a long time ago, back in the year 1977, when he left me to his home time of the mid 2010s.

No one here, no one in Alpha Company, knows or understands what's happening, we don't know how he's doing, or what his status is. The doctors won't tell us anything.

We've been through a lot of dark times since our founding, and have managed to hold our own even as the road before us grew steeper and more rugged. Since my arrival a little over a year ago, my rescue from my captors by my mate and his friend, Rainbow Dash, I have seen the fall of two of our brothers, of two members of Alpha Company, our tech specialist and pilot, a fox named Tails, and a very dear friend of both mine and Alex's, a Pokemon, a servine, named Terrias. I have also watched the slow deterioration of my Alex's happiness and sanity...and now, both of my saviors are on the brink of death. Rainbow Dash was impaled on our escape from the flying city of Eden, Zack's home and headquarters, and my own Alex, having lost his arm in the battle, is now bleeding out, and the doctors say he's lost a lot of blood, enough to drop even the strongest man.

Even through my containment, I can't recall ever feeling so hopeless as I do now. There is nothing I can do to help...nothing any of us can do. The doctors say to keep him in our prayers, that he'll make it, God-willing...and although I'm not terribly religious, I still identify myself as Christian, much like a number of my brothers, but I'm not really the Bible-toting, church-attending type, I prayed harder than I've ever done for him to make it...I can't lose him, he is my world, my life.

His condition only seems to be worsening, and I can't help but feel hurt and betrayed. Is all of this pain I'm going through because of my crimes as the Archangel Vitam? Alex and myself are, apparently, the reincarnations of two ancient, fallen Archangels, deleted from the texts of the Old Testament, the Archangels Messorem and Vitam, the first, and only true, grim reaper, and the giver of life, the one charged with returning the harvested souls of the dead into the next generation of the living, respectively. Where he was the reaper, Messorem, I was the life-giver, Vitam. Although I don't remember any of this life, all I know is that we were married, and deeply in love...until he gave everything to save me from death after a mistake I made that damned humankind to eternal torment and temptation. Many millennium, and many lifetimes, later, it seems that I'm still suffering punishment for what I did back then...because now I watch as the only person giving me a purpose, a reason, to live, fades away into nothing before my very eyes.

The texts say that God is loving, kind, and generous, that He hurts with us and only puts us through hard times to test our faith and its strength...but what kind of loving god would do this to us? Why must my suffering continue to prolong? Is there no end to my punishment? My torment? Maybe I'm selfish for thinking this...but I can't help but feel that all of this is my fault, in part. We would probably still be up in Heaven, living high and living large, as happy as ever with my Alex, if not for my mistakes.

If he dies...I don't think I'll be able to continue slugging through this.

When the doctors said that he would need a blood transfusion, I quickly offered up my services, willing to do anything to secure his safety and survival, but they rejected me, they said that I was not compatible, that he needed a very specific blood type, that because he was the universal donor, he was a very exclusive recipient. In addition, they said that even if I were his blood type, they still could not accept me, only because I am a stupid dolphin, and not a human like Alex. There is nothing I want more than his survival, and like he saved me back then, I want to save him, I have a debt to repay. Yet, all I can do is sit here and watch as his life bleeds away from him.

I hope it's not too late, I hope he can still be saved, and I hope that after all of this, we can finally be at peace, and it can just be me and him, living happily together for the rest of forever, maybe, even, I can become human like him...we can get married, have children, have a family, and live until our time comes and the reaper, whoever replaced Messorem after the fall, comes to take us away to the next life.

This is my only wish...let's see if God will answer my prayers this time.

Alex, I'm sorry...I'm so sorry for all of this...this is all my fault. If I wouldn't have been stupid as an angel, then maybe none of this would be happening...I'm sorry and...I love you...