In the beginning, humanity rebuilt the heavens and the earth.
They looked upon their works and saw that it was good.
However, it didn't stop there. They looked upon each other's works and saw that theirs were good too, but that they'd look even better with their own flag flying over it.
Humanity took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil from the eve of time and they bit deeply.
A bit too deeply, some would say; especially since they nearly choked to death on the seeds.
But enough of that. Here's the story of World War Six.
***
The apple tasted good. Too bloody good, the Premier decided.
"This was taken from an orchard near the Occupied Zone, you say?"
"Yes, Mr. Premier."
The Premier of the Rhuskan Imperium nodded. Outside his office, the ancient ruins of the Kremlin spired partially to heaven and partially to the department store across the street.
"What's keeping us from taking the Zone now, exactly?"
"Well, sir, there's the threat of embargo from Nippon should we resume the war with Koryo. And then there's always the Zhonguans who could go to war over Mongolia at an inopportune time. A war with Koryo would be just that inopportune time."
"Embargo from Nippon? Just who on earth do they think they are?"
"They are our largest trading partners on the Pausyphic Rim. An embargo from them would, of course, tear our two economies asunder. We would no longer have access to space without them."
"So we subcontract our intrasystem shipping to the Emeriquans instead and we think about building a fleetyard somewhere."
"Okay, but Nippon would gladly buy up Koryan war bonds just to spite us."
"For being the only nation on the planet with a pacifist constitution, they sure can be real pains in the neck."
"Maybe we can get someone to deal with Nippon while we take Koryo."
"Who?"
"The Panaysians."
"Those rabble-rousers?"
"This is right up their alley."
"Australe will do something about it."
"Australe is still licking its wounds from the war with Newzelen. They'll stay out of it."
***
The Panaysian Party, which sought to unify Southeast Aysia (by force of arms if necessary), and had conquered a vast chain of islands from Melaysia to Nuginee to Felapeina, was willing to strike an alliance with Rhuska to attack Koryo and Nippon. Panaysia landed an army on Okinau, and the Nipponese Self-Defense Forces braced for a major attack. Rhuska managed to get investors in its cause in Iorepha, where the provisional government of revolutionary Hellenica (which had just deposed a king) decided to train its new Revolutionary Guard under Rhuskan command in Koryo in exchange for the promise of aid packages over the next five years. The government of Deutschterre remained neutral, although private investors ate up Rhuskan war bonds like candy and mercenaries lined up to serve under the Cossack Army.
On the other side, Emeriqua, having no government, took no official action. However, many divisions of the Emeriquan Army voluntarily transferred themselves over to the temporary control of the Imperator of Nippon.
All in all, it could be said that ten nations participated in World War VI: Nippon, Koryo, and Emeriqua in the Pausyphic League, and Rhuska, Hellenica, Deutschterre, and the four nations of Panaysia (Felapeina, Melaysia, Indonaysia, and Timorre) on the side of the Mauscau Alliance. The outcome was that Nippon and Koryo were partially overran by the Alliance, although a successful partisan movement had been organized in the occupied regions. The war was dragging on and a victor was nowhere in sight, although things were slightly in favor of the Alliance.
There had been war crimes; three and a half years into the war a disease was introduced into Nippon that caused a blight to grow upon the forehead. It wasn't fatal or even deadly, but the pain was unbearable. The disease, presumably introduced by the Alliance, accidentally spread throughout all of humanity via trading channels. To prevent the total eclipse of human society by this self-inflicted wound, an international treaty was drawn up calling for the segregation of the infected and non-infected, and requiring that those who had the blight upon their foreheads could only do business with others who also had the disease, and that the clean could likewise only deal with the clean. Handling this required a large database, and the world created Terrabank, a monetary/record keeping entity that had everyone's information securely on file. It was secure and it aided in the combating of the blight.
After this, the world was rather irritated with the Mauscau Alliance. The purchase of war bonds on their side dropped severely, but it was only by the Alliance's repeated and intense declarations that it was not them and that they themselves would pay for the blight countermeasures that prevented any fourth member from joining the League. However, the world was now heavily in favor of ending the war.
A noteworthy happening about this time, three-and-a-half years into World War VI, was the declaration of independence of Selenia. Selenia was the name of a region of lunar colonies founded by Emeriquan and Brytash colonization corporations. Nominally under the control of the Crown of Brytannia, Selenia peacefully gained independence by popular vote and a native republic was established. This republic was unofficially headed up by a man, named Cristobal Chacazzo, who was the defense secretary and had led the independence faction in Selenia.
Here's a little bit about Chacazzo. He was an exemplary man, who lived before his time. He was born in a little town in Italia called Mantua, and he was from his very beginning a bright boy. He had been the captain of his school's chess team, president of the student body, and even valedictorian. He had been studying to be a priest when the Mediterrine War broke out. Italia and Frantia fought Hispania and the Berberine Republic for the islands of Sesilia, Korseca and Sardanay.
Now Chacazzo was a patriotic man, and he enlisted in the Italine Foreign Legion. He was assigned to the infamous Chi Xi Stigma Battalion, which was assigned to the task of invading Sesilia and eventually the Berberine capital of Cartagnis itself. He was such a dedicated soldier that he tattooed the Greek letters "chi", "xi" and "stigma" on his hand. He was a successful soldier, too, and he took emergency command of his squadron during the siege of Sierracuzza after his commander had been shot. He held an entire suburb there with only his squadron when the enemy counterattacked, and saved the Italine Foreign Legion an estimated five thousand casualties in so doing. After the conquest of Sesilia, he was given official control of the Chi Xi Stigma when its commander was promoted, and he orchestrated a complex airborne invasion of Cartagnis that went off without a hitch. Some say that the war would have been eventually won by the Berberines had not Chacazzo been there. He triumphed in the Italine capital of Roma at the young age of twenty-nine, a war hero and beloved by the people.
However, the government at that time grew jealous of his popularity with the masses, and they worried about him taking control of the government in the next elections. These were valid fears, since after leading the Chi Xi Stigma into the killing fields of Palermo, Chacazzo had become an avowed advocate of pacifism. He still led his soldiers into battle, but he proclaimed that he hated having to watch death on such a large scale. The government didn't want a pacifist in control of the government, as they were looking to expand their control into Svetzaterre and this would not come about with peace. So Chacazzo and the entire Chi Xi Stigma were proclaimed enemies of the state and many were murdered in the night. However, an informant in the Senate told Chacazzo about it, and he fled in the night after warning everyone in the battalion that he could.
Homeless and exiled, the Chi Xi Stigma found employment with Brytannia defending their lunar colonies. Chacazzo moved there, and after living there for five years he began to advocate independence. He insisted that independence be granted and not fought for, in order to be an example to the entire planet. The Queen was so impressed with him and his cause that even she joined the protest against her own Parliament to grant Selenian independence. It was granted a year later, and Chacazzo was written in for president even though he didn't run. He respectfully declined, but the man who did become the President of Selenia then selected him for defense secretary, which was basically what he and the Chi Xi Stigma had been doing anyway. He graciously accepted.
Meanwhile, back in the trenches of World War VI, the Rhuskans thought that they had stumbled upon a way to stop the guerrilla warfare. Rediscovered teleportation technology, dating back from the Idealist era, had begun to be tested again. It worked, and after that the Rhuskans successfully reconnected a network of ancient Emeriquan energy satellites to their national power grid. All this was kept a secret, of course, from the public and the enemy. The satellite network effectively tripled the amount of electricity available to the Rhuskans, and for free. Rather than sell the energy on the open market, though, to fund the war, the Rhuskans decided to put it to better use. They expanded on the Idealist rudimentary teleportation technology, making it possible to lock onto and beam away hundreds of people at a time. This required vast amounts of energy, but with the satellites this wasn't a problem. Rhuska started teleporting civilians suspected of guerrilla sympathy into huge bunkers in Cyberia. First, it was just the Nipponese and the Koryans. However, they then decided to take a huge chunk of Emeriqua captive with the weapon over a course of a year; specifically the chunk that had family serving under the command of Imperial Nippon. Instead of frightening Emeriqua out of the war, however, it merely served to goad them on to stop the Rhuskans.
This was bad news, as a POW revolt in the bunkers had just destroyed the teleportation devices and killed the guards. However, in charge though they may have been, they were still basically locked two hundred feet underground and the Rhuskans on the surface had no intention of letting them out and thus ruining the surprise of their secret weapon. However, they had no intention of letting them die either, as one-fifth of the population of Emeriqua, Nippon and Koryo was quite possibly the biggest bargaining chip in existence. (Interestingly enough, nobody ever outright accused Rhuska of teleporting those people. Especially not Emeriqua; they attributed it to an act of God or somesuch.)
By the time of the teleportations, or the "disappearances" as they were called at the time, the world was absolutely sick of the war. The rest of the world was looking for someone to put a stop to it all.
Cristobal Chacazzo stepped up and volunteered the Chi Xi Stigma and the Selenian military. They were as of yet technically green soldiers, and Selenia had never been at war. Chacazzo reasoned to the President of Selenia that the best use of the forces of Earth's moon was to restore peace to a troubled Earth. He also seemed to know something about what was really going on in Rhuska, and Earth was just infatuated with the man. So, at the behest of virtually every single noncombatant in World War VI, Cristobal Chacazzo and the Chi Xi Stigma rode through the sky in a blaze of glory on the Selenia Republican Dreadnought Stallion, and they landed and organized an international peacekeeping force waiting in nearby Zhongua to occupy the entire war zone. What should have been a nasty complication of the war was actually well-received by the combatants, and international occupation of Koryo, Nippon, and eastern Rhuska was welcomed with open arms. Maybe it was because Chacazzo was just that well-liked, although certainly a little blackmail against Rhuska concerning knowledge of the whereabouts of one-fifth of the Pausyphic Rim didn't hurt things, either. So to end the war, Rhuska gave up some land bordering Koryo and agreed to a limit on their military in exchange for peace, restoration of pre-war boundaries everywhere else, and Chacazzo's keeping of their dirty little secret. Chacazzo also managed to convince the victims of the teleportation to keep quiet about it as well; how he did this was rather secretive and thus not known to history. However, he did it and seven years after the beginning of World War VI, it was all over and peace finally dawned on the blue globe out the window of Chacazzo's house.
Chacazzo himself was lauded and cheered worldwide, and many people proposed resurrecting an ancient league known as the United Nations and putting him in charge of it. However, he shook his head and said that he wasn't worthy of such honors and merely wanted the simple life of patrolling the Selenian frontier and leading the Chi Xi Stigma. However, he reluctantly agreed to make the Chi Xi Stigma an international peacekeeping body, and to this day another war hasn't broken out on the surface of the Earth and the four-million-strong Chi Xi Stigma are respected throughout the world, even in Italia.