Alright guys, I'll try to make this one longer. Sorry about the previous chapter, I'm...not really the best at writing a prologue, but I can make a really good epilogue. So good, I think I'll end the story right now, and jump straight to it!

sweman: I understand what you mean. A bunch of people liked the fun nature of the original story, and this prologue is a lot different from it. Now that this story is taking place near Mass Effect 3 at the moment, I'll try, to the best of my ability to maintain what I got right in my first story.

However, since this chapter is more of a, "Jump-Start" to the story, it'll be more conversation based.

"Shit!"

"He's alive! What the hell?"

"Someone get a guardian in here!"

Bob woke up, gasping for breath as he struggled to get up from the table, as was his instinct, when his previous memory included a giant red star, and a Krogan trying to eat his face. Multiple arms and hands that held him down did nothing to stop his attempt at escaping.

"Hey! Bob, it's us! Stop struggling!", shouted an officer who gave him a good left hook to the face.

Bob tightened his grip on the researchers' arms as he surveyed the environment. It looked like a medical lab, with various cutting tools, body parts, and laser...thingies strewn around the area. He started to squirm again, more ferociously this time, until he caught sight of the familiar Cerberus insignia, with that same, cool little hexagon. Calming himself down, he decided to make conversation with the nice people pointing assault rifles at him.

"Uh...hey guys! It's great to see you again! I really don't know how you managed to put me back together so well, I mean, hey, you got my arm on my body again, my mouth is not on my neck...oh hey, I can move my toes!". He lifted up his feat and wiggled his toes, while nodding like a madman. "Nice job! I'm surprised that you didn't get jobs at the Citadel as doctors, I thought I was done for!" He looked up again at the workers, but frowned in disappointment as he saw a shocked face on every person he stared at. He slowly pulled his legs closer to his torso, and thought of the...likely possibility that something had gone wrong. A sense of dread entered his body, and would have caused him to panic again, if it weren't for a man in a huge suit of armor, that marched into the room.

"Alright everybody, show's over, get out of here."

Before everyone started walking out, a man piped up in anger."Hey! You can't just leave him without letting us watch over him. We don't know if his body's stable!"

The armored soldier seemed to stare daggers at the man, even with his almost cumbersome-looking helmet on. "Unless you think that those scissors in your hand could take on my rifle, you'd better get the hell out of here before we start putting you back together too.", threatened the seemingly calm officer.

If Bob was looking for any hint of defiance left in the researcher at that moment, he couldn't find any. Before he knew it, he had vanished, as if he had never been in the room. The intimidating officer looked at the frail, miserable person in front of him, who was attempting to phase into the table...as if that was going to help him! "So, you do realize that you just scared the hell out of all those researchers back there.", he asked with a surprisingly calm tone.

"Yeah, I guess I did. I'm scared about being alive too."

"Was that a joke?"

"Not really, I remember getting mutilated by a squad of aliens lead by an Alliance marine. So, I have a feeling that I'm not all that healthy right now."

The trooper laughed at that comment, although, Bob wasn't sure if he was laughing about him getting mutilated, or his doubt about life. "You must have had a run-in with Commander Shepard!"

Bob sat straight up at the mention of the word. He spoke up, saying with a mildly frightened tone, "Wait, the famed 'Savior of Skyllian Blitz'? No no no, it can't be him. The guy, and his pet Krogan just tried to strangle me with my own intestines!"

The soldier sat down on a stool, and set his rifle against the table Bob was laying on, even though it was out of his own reach. "You know, you don't have to be a good-guy to be known as a hero. You just have to make sure that your deeds outshine your atrocities, because once a person's enemy causes some trouble, it'll be very hard to want to like them. If you're fighting the kind of guys who eats infants, you tend to not care if your savior is forcing them into cannibalism.". He laughed again. "Sympathy is the kind of thing that leads to prosecuting people who are committing war crimes. But, the good works of the hero blinds you from the implications of how his or her actions affect them. Then, it gets all covered up, because you'll know that his crimes will make other people (who have an impersonal relationship to the event) upset, and want to execute the person. You won't care anyways, because those bad-guys were bad-news."

Bob looked at him in amazement, totally misjudging him as a stereotypical Drill Sergeant Badass. "Hey, you didn't have to explain Human nature to me. I was just wondering. Still, did you guys get rid of him?"

"Well, that's why I went on a semi-long explanation of explaining the event. See, while you were, uh...'asleep', Commander Shepard might have saved the Citadel from the Geth and the giant reaper 'Sovereign'. Everyone, except the councilors idolized him. Entire generations of aliens would have been wiped out if the Commander didn't help save the Citadel. Unfortunately for billions of people, he was killed by the Collectors during a mission patrolling the Outer Council Space. Even worse, those bugs started abducting people, right out of their impoverished colonies! Now, everyone wants to fight the Collectors, because of the bloody mess they made!". At this point, the man had started to raise his voice, even to the point of yelling the vowels that appear in every word that came out of his mouth.

Yet, Bob remained frozen in his seat, deeply contemplating everything that he was hearing. "So what you're saying, is that Commander Shepard's dead! Oh God, this is a fucking miracle!", exclaimed Bob with a ferocious tone that blurred the line between joy, and madness.

"The hell? Were you even listening to what I was saying? Commander Shepard, the savior of thousands of lives, died!"

"And...the butcher of an innocent trooper, stationed on a crappy base in Nepheron! What do you want me to do, grieve for him?"

"Why do you think that I went on that little speech about sympathy? Commander Shepard is an ass! I get it. He incinerated baby seals, and threw them at a mob that was trying to steal his copy of Galaxy of Fantasy X! But we needed him! He is the public's hero, and he was the only one that could be so exceptionally evil, to demoralize the Collectors. No one will care what he does to them!". The soldier looked up again, and saw a look of horror on Bob's face.

"Wait, you...needed him? Damn it...damn you all to hell, you brought him back didn't you?". Bob was just pacing around the room at this point, while simultaneously counting the days he had left to live.

"Look, lots of people were going to die without him. Cerberus already has a bad start, in terms of public opinion! No one will let us even think about pulling up the impalement poles! But Commander Shepard does better at this stuff than us, and people will love him for it. The Collectors can't be defeated, unless you scare the hell out of them! So...we resurrected him through the Lazarus Project, and sent him on a task to assemble a team to help him commit atrocities."

"You let him loose out there?"

"Listen...he's far away from us, and unable to hurt anybody. He's smart enough to know that he'll be prosecuted for anything harm he does to innocents. The only things he's hurting are the Collectors, and a bunch of mercenaries that get in the way. Just...trust us.". The officer maintained a surprisingly calm voice, despite the fact that he was dealing with an angry little man, who was dangerously close to the rifle laid near the bed.

Bob sat down again, and stayed silent for a few moments. Eventually, he spoke up, but winced when it came out like a prolonged sequence of creaking voices. More confidently, he said, "Alright. Fine...I'm sorry, I just really don't like dying. The feeling is unpleasant, you know?". Bob was about to smile, until he noticed the one, fatally important detail that he had overlooked in his questions, and accusations: "How long was I dead?".

"Well, this took you a while to ask..."

"Tell me!", Bob pleaded.

The soldier looked up, and sighed at the wounded commando in front of him. "Two years."

Bob...just laughed as he laid on the table helplessly. Of course it took two years...

"The Shepard...made a mess at Nepheron. We were in the process of creating the foundations of the Lazarus Project during this. To see if a total reconstruction of the body and mind is possible, we took the remains of everyone at the base, and tested them...yours included. The costs were immense, and the Illusive Man didn't want to spend billions of credits on a mere test, so we took the muck behind every kitchen sink, and stuck it inside of you guys. This trial contributed towards the real Lazarus Project, that was used for Shepard. There were a hundred and twenty tests, and a hundred and nineteen didn't even create a realistic bio-structure. Their bodies either fell apart, or grew inactive, because of the failures in the reconstruction of the brain.". He looked up and saw Bob taking it all in, while trying to poke his hands to make sure that he wasn't dreaming. "You were that lucky number one-hundred and twenty. We got you right, but your body seemed to be getting worse, and worse. None of us thought you were going to make it; we were going to dump you tomorrow, since we were still caught up in the success of Shepard's resurrection, and your inaction...yeah. That's about it."

Bob eyed the equipment in the lab, and then looked at the man. "So...is there anything else you want to tell me?"

"Well, now that the two years past, we've moved on from guns with unlimited ammo, and started using guns with twenty-first century styled magazines for some reason. Also, uh...you might have to redo training again, since, we no longer do 'Commando Units', anymore. You're going to get armor just like mine, just...without shields. We also got ninjas, spartans, and mechs in our army, thanks to funding from an anonymous source. But right now, we're just stockpiling it all, since Shepard's doing the work for us. So, we're going to give you your "Assault Trooper" training, and give you an office job. Also, my name's Knight. So...goodbye."

...And he didn't even shut the door on his way out.

Bob was fortunate to have been given a year to work out his feelings over the mass of revelations that tried to suffocate him in his sleep. I mean, staying sane despite hearing about things like resurrected psychopaths, being missing for two years, mass differences in technology, and "moar" reapers is a pretty impressive feat. But now, things seemed to have gotten better, in this age of pure pandemonium. The Commander and his squad defeated the Collectors with no casualties, and even donated the base to Cerberus, for the benefit of Humanity! But most of all, Bob hadn't died yet. Cerberus didn't even seem like the militant Alliance cell that everyone claimed it to be. It working for the well-being for every, single, living creature. Every sort of grime that had latched on to the organization caused no more afflictions, and hope seemed to be present for the Assault Trooper in everyday life. Anonymity was an action unheard of, as Cerberus was finally assimilated into the sentient union of life and acceptance in the troubled galaxy.

Then...it all ended when Knight came to talk to him during shore-leave.

"Oh...hey. Listen, Commander Shepard blew up a Solar System with a Mass Relay."

Bob dropped his cup of ramen, as a result of his body trying to overcome shock, yet, completely failing, and causing himself to literally freeze in his posture. Strangely enough, the cup of ramen floated off, as if invisible little hands were carrying it. Bob uttered only a few, but totally understandable words. "Pure evil...is back?"

"Also, as reported by a mangled up spy, sent up to us as a message, said that Shepard has gone to war with Cerberus."

The Assault Trooper looked around, and saw countless silhouettes circling both of them. His body started shaking with anger, and seemed to synchronize with the steady movements of the figures converging with them. His voice seemed to also, as he screamed at the same time the forms charged toward the two.

"Fuuuuuuuccckck!"

Alright, don't worry. My old style of using the hilarious antics of Cerberus Troopers is coming back. This just introduced the whole conflict that was coming together. Feel free to review, and, thanks for reading this far. I'll try to get the next chapter in soon.