The Martial Unity

Indeed, the Divine Doctor had spent many centuries looking for the illness of Gaia, and he hadn’t even gotten close for a long time. Now, within a decade or so, they had managed to find the illness and even cure Gaia of it.

However, he seemed dissatisfied.

“Your insights into the life of the universe were interesting,” The Divine Doctor remarked. “And even more interesting were your assertions that the universe was ill. Indeed. I share the same thoughts. While aiding you as you cure Gaia has been fulfilling…”

His eyes glinted with determination. “Curing the universe of its illness will be even more fulfilling.”

Rui’s smile grew wry at those words. “I’ll take any help I can get.”

BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT

Rui glanced at his commpad as his ethereal eyes grew serious at the caller.

It was none other than his little sister, Ru.

“I need to go. I’ll see you guys later.”

WHOOSH

He teleported away from East Genora to the Vargard Royal Palace in the Kandrian Empire.

WHOOSH

He arrived in a messy conference room with all kinds of documents, papers, and charts scattered across the entire table. The moment he set foot in, the entire world seemed to change, as the very nature of reality shifted in his presence.

While heaven and earth didn’t so much as even shudder, and yet the very fabric of reality seemed to shift and flow in his presence, as if it were water.

And to him, it may as well have been.

His Transcendent presence drew the attention of each and every single staffer of the Ministry of Harmony to him. And yet, their eyes were frayed with stress and exhaustion, while dark bags hung underneath their eyes. They seemed to tired to even be awed by his extraordinary presence, simply continuing with their work.

The sound of shuffling papers, officials talking with various parties, negotiating terms and conditions of their participation in the unification of Gaia hung in the air. At the very head of the table was none other than his little sister Ru, who was buried in a large number of documents that almost overflowed the table in front of her. She looked to be the most exhausted out of all of them, looking like she hadn’t gotten even a wink of sleep through the night. The light of early dawn peered through the window, lightly illuminating her office.

She reminded him of the many times his father ended up in that state whenever there was a crisis in the world, making Rui feel nostalgic about all the trouble that he had put his father through. He considered it a form of father-son bonding that they had never gotten when he was young.

“You called?” Rui asked, walking over to her side. “How’s the unification of Gaia going? Did you iron out a declaration?”

“We have a draft of the declaration and charter that has managed to earn the approval and support of around eighty percent of polities,” she remarked with a tired expression.

“Eighty percent?” Rui raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me to twenty-percent of nations are still not on board? You want me to go talk to them?”

Rui felt a little irritated that people were playing politics in such a serious moment in their history. Right now, they were dealing with the moment of pivotal importance to their entire civilization, and people still had the gall to mess around?

If they couldn’t achieve some kind of long-lasting peace with the laminar integuments, then it could cripple their civilizations for eons to come. Rui wasn’t sure if he could protect all of Gaian Civilization from the might of the Laminar Civilization if they truly decided to put in some real effort into achieving their objectives at the cost of Gaian Civilization. He certainly didn’t want to put it to the test. That was why they needed to enter negotiations with the Laminar Civilization with a mandate from all polities in the world.

The more the mandate was delayed, the greater the probability that something could go wrong.

“It’s not that nations are purposefully delaying the process; they just want to make sure that their interests are properly represented,” Ru quickly added with a reassuring tone. “For instance, the seafolk are concerned that their absence of a space presence might disenfranchise might make it so that signing away a space mandate to the Gaian Alliance will make it impossible for them to even commence the process. I have had to, in turn, make the language of the declaration very vague and add a lot of caveats to placate their concerns.”

She shared a file with him containing an unceremonious list of all the exact statements in the exact declaration of the Gaian Alliance.

Rui read the first line. “We, the nations and peoples of Gaia, do hereby solemnly publish and declare that we, from this day forth, are united under the banner of the Gaian Alliance and bestow upon the Gaian Alliance a mandate to represent, to pursue, and to act upon our collective interests as citizens of Gaia and as individual polities. We hereby recognize the right of the Gaian Alliance to levy War, to contract partners, to barter trade, and to forge peace, at any scale or manner that it may deem necessary to fulfill the collective interests of survival, expansion, and prosperity of the nations and the peoples of Gaia while nonetheless recognizing our own sovereignty, and right to withdra our mandate should we judge, at our own sovereign discretion, our interests to be unprotected.”

He nodded. “Sounds good.”

“Well, we may need to add more caveats,” Ru heaved a sigh. “They want guarantees of freedom of development, freedom of expansion, freedom to do this and that. Coming up with a charter that creates an alliance that creates a unified front but also ensures that all of their personal interests are not compromised will not be easy. But actually ensuring that the Gaian Alliance will fulfill all of their interest perfectly is also impossible.”

Such was the nature of unions and alliances, to act together to pool their leverage and deterrence, also meant that they sacrificed freedoms that they would have otherwise had if they hadn’t decided to band together.