Chapter X: The War Begins
The war room of the Grand Presidential Dictatorship of Deseret was a tiny room with a crappy wooden table in the middle and only three chairs. Because all of Deseret's army was mobilized in the invasion of Brunei, there were also no bodyguards.
Still, it was the war room. El Presidente, as commander-in-chief, sat at the end. Gustav sat to El Presidente's side, mainly because Mark and El Presidente felt that the third chair needed to be filled more than Gustav's importance to military operations. Mark sat last, as field general of Deseret's armies. However Deseret was so advanced that it was actually just a hologram of Mark, not Mark himself. ...Clearly El Presidente has been watching too much Star Wars.
"WAT'S DA SITUATION!?" El Presidente yelled in an exaggerated deep voice. "I've always wanted to say that."
Mark sighed. "Nothing much, sir, we've just made Deseret's first ever occupation, I guess..."
"This is cause for celebration!"
"Not really, sir. In fact I think celebrating Deseret's first occupation would be not only pre-mature to the "winning of the war" celebrations but also the Great Powers would look at us and be like, 'man they must not think very highly of themselves' and our prestige would lower."
"True! Once again your forethought saves us from our idiocy, Mark!"
Mark looked around awkwardly, and it was Gustav's turn to sigh. "Actually, sir, that was me."
"Oh! Right! Gustav. I knew that. Just testin' ya."
Mark's hologram was starting to fizzle a bit, as the Mormon badasses went and kicked some Bruneian ass. Gordon Freeman took a musket shot to the chest, but naturally his suit saved him even though it was a radioactive lead ball made of radiation. Arnold Schwarznegger got stabbed by the Sultan three times with a scimitar, but was un-phased because he's such a badass. Sylvester Stalone mowed down an entire contingent of Bruneian musketeers with his M60 machine gun. But the 2997 other Deseret warriors there were also making names for themselves, for they had been trained and disciplined by the most hardass men on the planet, while Brunei fielded a bunch of wimps in uniform and called it an army.
After approximately five seconds of kickassery, the Bruneian army is routed.
However, Gordon Freeman managed to catch a cold and will probably have to sit the rest of this war out. Gordon Freeman is worth approximately 632 people...
Gustav felt the need to bring up somethin' about some new Plurality tech, you hear?
Yea. In completely unrelated news, Army Professionalism is invented, so El Presidente orders his ragtag team of misfitted retards for scientists to start working on some high and low pressure steam engines.
Hehe, they're coming back for more!
Mark orders his troops to use their chainsaw bayonets to cut down the jungle so that the Bruneians might actually have a chance.
It didn't help. They got p0wn3d even more this time. Though, Mark has no explanation for the 40 or so Mormons that actually managed to somehow die, though...
Shortly after, the Bruneians realize that "El Presidente, you're my only hope!" and accepts their own annexation.
The war lasted approximately one hour and resulted in a sniffling badass scientist and several thousand dead Bruneians.
It is clear that reforms can be passed now due to the tenacious acts of Mark, so... yea... voting is a possibility but El Presidente will have to think about this some more. Also worth noting are changed since Mormon Brunei's entry into the Empire is that the population has doubled from roughly 34k or so to 70k.
And the grand Bank of Deseret is thriving more than ever:
And hey, El Presidente looks at his infamy, which is a measure devised by Mormon strategists to calculate just how pissed off the United Kingdom might get for no apparent reason. Its fine.
Therefore we can decide to make a move that El Presidente likely would've made anyway.
Hopefully Gordon Freeman will feel better in time to participate in this war.