The rest of the world continued to burn, but somehow, the chaos that had enveloped the globe was still not showing its face in the calm island nation of Oceos. It was all too clear that the haven of peace was not going to last, however... it was just too much of a target. Sexually liberal, composed of strange beast creatures, taking a passive approach to world problems... they were just too neutral to stay neutral.
	In the Northern part of the Kings' Islands, there was a forest. This forest was made of thin conifer trees, with smooth bark and wide, high-up canopies. The forest floor was littered with leaves and small rocks, and the occasional bushes. This is the remains of what used to be Kielder Forest, which is slowly regrowing after taking a double whammy of climate change and flooding.
	Walking between the trees on a faint footpath was three mares. The mare that walked in front walked on two legs, with her eyes up and her ears cocked. She was a six foot anthropomorphic mare, a paint horse, although it was hard to tell as her head was a pure chestnut color and her mane a dark brown color. This mare, named Autumn, wore a very covering robe with its hood up over her head. The robe came down to nearly her hooves and had a belt tied around the waist. On one side, this belt held a .357 five-shooter double action revolver, with a six inch barrel, shiny metal, and wooden furniture. There was a hole through which she put her tail, and this entire homespun robe was a dark blue. Underneath, Autumn's thickly built equine frame was wreathed in white splotches over her chestnut undercoat. On top of her robe she wore a harness, and attached to that harness was a couple of thick branches that had been cut from a fallen tree. There was also a bag that was connected to this harness with a couple of clips, mostly for food but also having a few spare bullets for both of their guns. The second mare, again anthropomorphic, was more of a pony due to her size.
	Tessie was barely five feet tall and had a sandy coat with a white dash down her face, which was more angular compared to Autumn's. Her hair was a light bleached blonde, and she wore her mane and tail much longer and free-flowing than Autumn's, as well as a little ribbon tied around the base of her tail. She wore a crimson long sleeved tunic, a pair of tight-fitting pants, and a straw hat. She also had a holster containing an old-fashioned six-shooter revolver, this one chambered in .38 Special, again with a six-inch barrel, dark metal, and wooden furniture. On her other hip were three canteens full of water, tinkling and swishing quietly with each of her movements. She also dragged two large branches, though they were much smaller than Autumn's. She hummed a soft, sweet tune to herself, smiling, pressing her hooves carefully into the damp dirt and occasionally staring at the back of her girlfriend and admiring her form. Tessie blushed and glanced away when Autumn threw a glance over her shoulder and smirked, but caught a few more glances when the bigger mare looked away. They had been smitten with each other since their chance encounter fishing a little over a year ago. The two blissful lovers and their mostly non anthropomorphic pack horse, a huge black and white shire horse named Bandsaw, strode through the gentle rain that penetrated the chilly air, the rustling noises of the dragged wood and the soft pats of their hooves in the softened dirt audible over the rain and the pony's humming. 
	Bandsaw carried the three largest pieces behind herself, her synthetic fabric saddle unoccupied and her saddlebags stuffed with tools and supplies. The big mare seemed to have no difficulty in carrying all of this, and even she looked happy, despite the rain dampening her fur. She was mostly not anthropomorphic, but she did in fact used to be a human. It is entirely possible with the genetic technology the Oceons possessed to become a sort of Disney-fied animal, which can speak in limited capacities and has human intelligence. It is even more expensive and painful than normal anthropomporphosizing, but it can be done, and Bandsaw, or Bandy, had done this a long time ago. It brought advantages for the other two mares. For one, she could talk, and two, she had a humanoid lifespan and aging curve.
	The three mares, Autumn aged 28 and Tessie and Bandy at 26, had just finished clearing out some fallen trees and harvesting their lumber to help them with an addition to their three-room cabin on the shore of a lake. They were about halfway there with just an hour or so more of walking when Autumn abruptly stopped. She perked her ears and looked around, her dark eyes glinting with alarm and her nostrils flaring. Tessie stopped as well and looked about, frowning and flaring her own nostrils, picking up on a sour stench in the air. Her thought was that of a forest fire, but Autumn knew the scent. There were odd scents out here, but most of the time it was someone cooking drugs or making moonshine. It was of questionable legality, but what happened in the forest, stayed in the forest, as far as they were concerned. That smell was not the smell of moonshine or drugs, however. It was the stench of explosives. Autumn shrugged off her harness and sack and pulled her revolver, cocking back the hammer and turning to her smaller lover. She told Tessie, "I don't like that smell. I'm gonna go have a peek... come if you want, hon, but you can stay with Bandy if you would like." Tessie shook her head and pulled out her .38, cocking it as well and grinning as she shimmied out of her harness and dropped the canteens on the ground on top of it. She told her mate, "I don't want to leave that pretty tail of yours uncovered." Autumn rolled her eyes.
	The larger mare then turned and patted Bandy's flank, "Just stay here, Bandsaw, and we'll be back." She reached around the horse and undid the harness, telling her, "Don't hesitate to kick anyone into the next county if they try to hurt you." Bandsaw actually smirked as Autumn kissed her cheek, replying, "You know I won't!" After a little chuckle, the two anthropomorphic equines set off into the woods, crouching low and doing their best to minimize the noise they were making. It was not easy with their bare hooves, but they did their best. They followed the smell, their faces wrinkling as they got closer and closer. Autumn waved to Tessie to get in cover as they saw a dilapidated shack in the distance, a little log cabin with thick smoke roiling from the chimney. Tessie ducked behind a tree while Autumn, up ahead, crouched behind a rock. Tessie scanned the house while her girlfriend checked the woods around it, noting the three small utility vehicles, gas generator, and radio antenna. This was getting weirder by the minute. A man appeared out of the side of the shed, wearing a white dust mask. He pulled it off and then removed his goggles, smoothing back his black hair. Tessie glanced to her girlfriend and then holstered her weapon, suddenly appearing from behind the tree and giving a loud, "Howdy!" 
	He whirled around and nearly dropped his respirator, watching the petite pony approach the shack. She smiled at him even as she was cringing internally from the smell. She waited until she was closer to do a little curtsie before pointing to the chimney and asking, "Is everything okay? That smells awfully bad, and I've never seen smoke that thick." He stared at her like she was some kind of alien creature. Tessie kept up her friendly smile and the little cute perk to her tail, doing her best to look innocent while Autumn watched with wide eyes from a concealed position behind her. The older man stared at her for a few more seconds before blinking, rubbing the back of his neck, and spluttering, "A-ah, no, no, everything is fine, ma'am. Just burnt dinner, is all. I'd welcome you to dine with me but... a-ah, y'know, you probably don't want too now!" He chuckled nervously and shrugged as the small mare just giggled with him and exclaimed, "Its fine! I'd love to come dine with you. Never seen you around here before! We should get to know each other. I can help you make somethin', I know how to make a fine herbivore's dinner!" The man held up his hand and started to back away, "O-oh, no, that's... that's fine... it... it ah, won't be necessary." Tessie frowned, "Oh, come on now, it won't be a big deal!" She kept up with him, keeping the distance the same, "Besides, you gotta be burnin' something bad with that kinda smell... did you try burning drift wood? The paint on that ain't always so good for your lungs."
	It was then he tried to pull a pistol on the pony. He regretted that rather quickly as the small pony whipped out her .38 like a cowboy and put a round through his gut, followed a split second later by a .357 magnum shot into his chest over Tessie's shoulder. He went sprawling into the dirt, dead within seconds as his blood soaked into the ground below him. Tessie let out a little hiss of breath between her lips as she slowly relaxed and raised her eyes to carefully approach the door. Autumn ran up behind her, letting out a loud curse and ducking as a shot shattered the dirty window of the cabin. It wasn't for her, however. The bullet ripped a hole through the brim of the pony's hat and made her nearly fall over in shock, whinnying. Autumn screamed her name, but Tessie quickly waved her off, shouting that she was fine. Before they could react, two more humans, both males, burst out of the cabin and scrambled away. The two mares let them go. They piled into the one room cabin and checked carefully for others hiding inside.Through the window they saw  a fourth person came back from the woods, see the body, and turn tail, running away, yelling. 
	Autumn moved over and shut off some gas burners situated underneath a mess of chemistry equipment, waving her hand in front of her face and coughing. Tessie grunted softly and squinted, clearly doing her best not to gag on the thick fumes. They left the door open to vent the place, and Tessie went outside to guard the cabin while Autumn inspected the chemistry equipment upon the rough counter top. Just as she suspected, they had been cooking up high explosives, and one of the batches had gotten a little too warm and the reaction had fizzled. There were some cabinets, and inside them, she found pipes loaded with explosives and shrapnel, plus a binder containing plans. They were horrifying. It involved placing the bombs on some passenger trains and letting them detonate during loading or offloading, when the passengers would be most densely packed. There was an even worse one deeper in the book, planning a follow up bombing and shooting of an elementary school. It had the bone chilling words of psychopaths, such as "rotten plants must be snipped at the roots" and "bastard children of bastard animal wives and husbands must be culled like the sick cattle they are". At this point, Autumn felt bile rising in her throat, and it wasn't from the fumes. She dropped the binder and stepped outside, gasping and clutching at her chest. Tessie glanced over and gave her a concerned look, which the mare just waved off. 
	They had to take a few moments to recover. Then Autumn showed the plans to Tessie, and held her as Tessie gasped and nearly began to cry. Some of the things they had written in there were inconceivably awful, and they even had a few passages on the three mares themselves, clearly having been spying on them over the last few days. They called them blasphemers, sinners, disgusting animals, and all sorts of other things. While Autumn was praying to Zeus and all of his other gods, Tessie gathered as much evidence as she could in her arms, and then managed to get Autumn back to her feet. They completed their wood hauling trip, and then they rode upon Bandsaw to the nearest town to report their findings. They had stumbled upon a terrorist plot and foiled it, totally by accident. They made the trips in near total silence, fully realizing just how the rest of the world viewed them. It was a sobering thing indeed for the two who had just a few moments ago been blissfully ignorant in love and happiness.


	Elsewhere in the world, another spot of trouble was brewing for the nation. The Northwest Passage was the easiest way for ships from Oceos to make their way over to the Eastern nations of the world. These ships, often armed with thickened hulls and icebreaking bows, would depart from Greenland and carry various goods to the Eastern nations. The only problem was Cascadia. Cascadia had proven they were not too keen on allowing any Oceon ships into their waters, and Oceon was not too keen on provoking them further. On this day, however, the Oceon icebreaker [i]Olympus[/i], a five hundred foot dark purple bulk carrier, was wandering down past what was left of the Aleutians and deep into Cascadian waters. She was an old fashioned ship with her superstructure split fore and aft, with the pilothouse forward and the split and raked exhaust stacks on the rear of the ship. In between were huge stacks of containers. She carried about twenty seven crew aboard.
	On this day, her Captain was thinking of time, and how overdue the ship was at her next port of call. Sailing South would save a lot of time... So, he ordered a course change. The last incident with the Cascadians had been long ago, right? Surely they wouldn't be mad, stil... He was a reckless and carefree man, obvious by how oblivious he was to the danger he was putting himself and his crew in. The [i]Olympus[/i] steamed into the EEZ of Cascadia, a massive radar target and impossible to miss with the naked eye. Her Oceon ensign was clearly flying on her forward mast for all to see. Her crew was armed with a handful of carbines and a light machine gun, but those were for pirates, and would not do a whole lot against an organized force. No one else in the world knew about this brewing disaster, except for some other more lawful Captains who radioed loud warnings to the [i]Olympus[/i], only to have them fall on deaf ears. That morning, the Chief Engineer and a young Able Seaman were standing on the roof of the rear house, leaning on the railing and enjoying the slight warmth radiating from the stacks behind them, trying to comprehend their Captain's plan. They watched the sun rise amidst a sky that was a bright, fiery red. The aging arctic hare turned to the younger polar bear, peering at him from behind a smoking pipe and a muzzle that was covered in thin, graying fur. He asked the young bear, "Do you know what that means, Finn?" Finn just shook his head and replied, "No, sir." Bishop turned back to the sea and its fiery glow from the sky, telling him softly, "Make your peace with your god of choice... you will be meeting them soon. I feel it in my bones."
	The polar bear just blinked a few times and stared out to sea. After a few seconds, his eyes were closed, and he was whispering a prayer to Poseidon.



	In the Capital of Moreau, the Foreign Relations Adviser, an aging human named Oliver Beulens, was struggling with his job. This shriveled old man with a wispy gray combover looked even more tired than usual as he gazed at the array of papers in front of him, which were mostly headlines and casualty reports from all of the civil wars going on across the world. From the corner of the room one of his aides watched with great concern as he cupped his hands over his face, sighing softly and shaking his head. The other human male approached the desk and asked, "Are you okay, sir?" 
	Oliver looked up with a little frown, "No, Arvid, I am not. I... want to do something about all of this death and destruction, but I just can not. None of them will accept anything from us. Nothing! I even offered some of our old frigates to the Han but they were not interested... I can not get through to them and people just keep dying! It's the same all over this damned planet!" Arvid sat down in one of the simple armchairs in front of his boss. He stared out of the window past the Adviser for a moment, then just sadly shook his head and told him, "There isn't much to do, sir. Sometimes... the world just breaks, and it has to fix itself. We can't fix it." Oliver set his jaw firmly and set a pair of spectacles over his face, saying, "Archeus Wadsworth secured one hell of an agreement with the NAU, though... why can't we do the same with the Han or the Cascadians? There has to be some way..." He started to lay out plans. The Oceons could sell designs for their amphibious machines, or send some of their old ships to these hostile nations to try and calm them down. 
	Religious mercenaries, Most Favorite Nation status, simple talks... they knew something had to be done, because their little nation out on the edge of the world would not survive if she could not make some more friends. Their Navy might be good but they could not hide in the Atlantic forever. No one wanted a war, and many were scared of one, with the state the world was still in. Cracks were already showing and it has yet to be seen if anyone could patch them in time, or if the illusion of happiness and peace would be shattered for all.