Felix was leaning back on the couch in his office, his feet crossed on the coffee table and hands clasped behind his head, obviously in deep thought.

[Whats wrong, sir?] Raven, his personal AI assistant asked. [You seem to be zoning out a lot these days.] Felix had remained unmoving in his position for more than twenty minutes, the rise and fall of his chest and blinking eyelids his only movements.

Nothing, Im just trying to figure out where things are going to go from here. Its been a week since the countries signed their individual surrender accords, but no matter how I think about things, I cant see a peaceful resolution. Theres guaranteed to be problems in the future, no matter what, Felix sighed.

[What makes you say that?] she asked.

History.

[Do you mean how those who fail to learn from historys lessons are doomed to repeat it?]

Exactly. Every time one nation overwhelmed another and received their surrender or succeeded in an annexation, an insurgency has arisen from within just as things seemed to calm down. Those insurgencies cause a lot of issues for the winners by targeting their weaknesses. Aron may be the strongest person alive and have the most overwhelmingly powerful military thats ever been seen, but hes still sure to have weaknesses. Nobody can be that powerful in every aspect, Felix explained.

Just take the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, for instance. In 1979, they invaded Afghanistan to aid the communist forces in Kabul fight off various insurgent forces, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who was known as the Afghan Arabs back then.

The Soviets had every advantage in that fight. They had a strong military, high morale, the more technologically advanced weapons, and the numbers on their side. By all rights, they shouldve had an easy time taking out some small, weak insurgent groups. But that wasnt the case! Their incursion in support of Kabul caused a decade-long conflict between the Soviets and Afghani insurgent groups that finally ended with a Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a full decade later.

Then in 2001, al-Qaeda reared their head again and carried out a terror attack on the United States, leading to another conflict that lasted up until a week or so ago. The American War on Terror.

We declared war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in October of 2001, yet despite outnumbering and outgunning them in every aspect, they still managed to drag out the war for more than fifteen years. And it wouldve dragged on even longer if Aron hadnt come around and basically ended all wars. And those two are in living memory. If we go back even further, there are even more examples.

Like after World War I, when the Ottoman Empire lost and the allied powers tried carving it up. The Turks rose up and fought back under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who started the Turkish War of Independence that resulted in the formation of modern-day Turkey. Going even further back, the Koreans fought back against Japanese invaders, and so did the Chinese. Or we can go forward to the French Resistance against the Third Reich after France surrendered to Germany.

Basically, every time an overwhelming force comes up, a resistance group springs up like weeds to fight against it. But now itll be even more severe. Instead of one nation stomping another nation into a mudhole, or alliance versus alliance, this time it was one nation against literally every other nation in existence, Felix explained.

So now that Arons military has displayed its might, Im worried that therell be hundreds, if not thousands of groups of freedom fighters cropping up everywhere around the world. Hell, it wouldnt surprise me at this point if the Atlanteans came back to the surface from some underwater city somewhere, he griped.

[Opposition will naturally always exist, but that doesnt mean itll be impossible to deal with,] Raven said. [Im sure Sir Aron and mother are already aware of the issue and have made plenty of plans to deal with any situations that may arise.] She had full confidence in Aron and Nova to have foreseen such an obvious issue. If even Felix, who she privately thought was perhaps a little on the slow side, could see it, his boss most certainly could... right?

I know, I know. I was mostly thinking of how I would handle it if it were me in the hot seat. The only lesson history teaches is that nobodys ever learned a single thing from history, and Im sure Im no exception to that. Its more morbid curiosity than anything else, Felix grumped.

[If youre putting yourself in the hot seat, so to speak, then you also have to consider the technological advantage that Sir Aron and mother have over those historical forces. Would the Turkish War for Independence have succeeded if King Constantine had the Panopticon? Or would the Chinese Boxer Rebellion have lost to the Eight-Nation Alliance if they had SLEEK suits and pulse rifles? Would Osama bin Laden have survived as long as he did if the Americans had Poseidon Navys carrier fleet and Titans Wrath cannons? Would the Viet Cong have forced American forces to withdraw if they had the training our Reaper teams go through? Or would World War I ever have started if Archbishop Ferdinand had an ARES Aegis team guarding him?

[Even if you take ten thousand steps back, what do you think would be the result of putting nyxians up against the FBI and KGB during the cold war?]

Raven had many more examples available, but she figured those would be more than enough specific instances. [In every case where insurgency forces troubled the winners of conflicts in the past, its always been when the difference between the two wasnt that large. And that isnt the case here. You can think of it like this: Sir Aron and ARES going up against modern forces is no different from the pre-9/11 American military being put on a battlefield against a military from the Bronze Age. Thats how much of a lead Sir Aron currently has against the rest of the world, and thats even when he wasnt really focusing on building forces to face terrestrial foes,] she explained.

[Our sides only limitation is the number of people under the ARES umbrella, but that isnt a limitation thatll last forever. And as fast as Sir Aron can build up his forces, Im sure hell be shoring up that weakness before the insurgencies can grasp it.]

I suppose thats true. Ill go see what hes up to myself, Felix said. Raven had put his mind at ease, and once he put down the impossible task of trying to think like his supergenius best friend, he realized he hadnt seen him in quite some time.