What they didn't know, what they were a bit too foolish to ever fully realize; was that They have always been there. As voices in their heads and whispers in their ears; as drying ink on declarations of war and as the spilt blood of prostitutes in their alleys.
After centuries (Millennia, even.) of building up in the conflicts and waged warfare nations had always so recklessly involved themselves in, everything shameful about their history that was carefully averted from conversation, had taken on a form. They were personifications of everything wrong with a nation and their inevitably blood-clad past. The nation's personality, image, and being were twisted and warped into something terrifyingly unrecognizable. These entities, eloquently referring to themselves as "Player Two's", were mockeries of their nations, broken shards of a shattered mirror under their original selve's bare feet.
They had taken over their original nation's positions violently and instantaneously. In one moment, every nation of the world…suddenly wasn't a nation, anymore. In one moment, they had felt themselves severing from their land and from their people. Their immortality, they didn't lose (It takes a bit more than that to be rid of such a curse.), but the very second they had acknowledged these "2P"s, they had physically felt their status as protectors, representatives, and heirs to the nations that were their identity flicker away like the sudden snuffing of a flame.
What happened to the (now former) nations after this varied.
Some were killed. Dead. Vanished, as if their eons-long existences never were and never would be.
Some were almost killed, but with the help of another ex-nation, had escaped the fate of becoming Dead. These ex-nations were Dimmed.
Others were Dissident, living in hiding. Some of them wanted their countries back, and caused revolt against this unplanned, unwanted regime wherever they could. Some just took to the skies or sea in hopes of living out the rest of their lives with some resemblance of peace.
Others still were Daunted, forced or manipulated into an involuntary "alliance" with their 2P selves. Their 2P selves, for some unfathomable (possibly sadistic?) reason, had kept them around, and so these unlucky few had to watch as these imposters let their nations crumble and wither before their eyes.
A particularly hardy minority were Defiant, outright killing their Player Two's. Though their nationship had been stripped, they'd been able to keep their countries relatively untouched. They lived in a sort of unstable peace, shutting themselves off from the rest of the corrupted world.
Whatever their situation, what mattered was that the world was no longer theirs.
This is the story of the ones that tried to take it back.
A/N: Man, I really like coming up with AU's, and even though 2P is already a thing, I wanted to do some sort of post-apocalyptic world-domination thing with it?
By "took to the skies or the seas", I mean as in boats and airships and such. Yes, I'm going to partake in that sky-pirate stuff, ha ha.
There's…really not going to be any outright pairings in this? I mean, there may be, but it won't by any means be the focus.