​Nathaniel fights alongside footpips (green-furred hominids three meters tall with large, black lips) defending planet Chijug against slimy, air-breathing octopi used to living in very low gravity. The octopi cannot land on the planet, but set up large shooting platforms in orbit. Then the atmosphere is seeded with a deadly virus. Weeks after the main fighting is over, footpips (and all other life forms) start to die off. They show no symptoms whatsoever until suddenly and unexpectedly dying in an instant. Everyone must wear gas masks to go outside. To save the stuffians (which breathe through their skin), they must not be played with so that they can go dormant. Nathaniel survives with others deep underground when they are attacked by an invasion of double crabs. The crabs each have two crab-like bodies at almost a ninety-degree angle to each other with a bridge connecting the two. They also have mouse-like ears and wear gas masks. Those surviving the virus and the crab invasion reemerge to find the planet barren and uninhabitable. The trouble does not stop there, as Chijug is soon overrun by tyrannosaurs, pelycosaurs, ankylosaurs, bears, and raccoons. The raccoon scientists release a bacterium that eats up the materials that the footpip gas masks are made of, so the footpips must steal gas masks from the enemy, but there aren’t enough to go around. With no native food left, the footpips hunt the tyrannosaurs. They fight to a draw until the cobra-like heltas arrive to finish off them off. Finally, a joint force of ninos and humans arrives to rescue them at the last moment. hammer-faces, ninos, and humans are now the three dominant races in the galaxy. All others have surrendered.

​The trizeka war is winding down as Nathaniel eradicates the last pockets of Katie and Allison resistance. Gone are the superbombs and other heavy weapons. None can afford to keep the factories going and all three powers regress technologically. One-fifth of the galactic population has died in the war. As Nathaniel leads the charge on a Katie planet inhabited by monsters made mostly of poop held together by filaments of living cells, the stress of the war causes former allies in every camp to turn on each other. Many non-primate races (snarugi, aqua monsters, bony coleslaw blobs, dinosaurs, bears, zleesnits and nops, spinning top crabs, etc) attack the primate races (meekons, hammer-faces, ninos, humans, mymmonians, extolons). The alien wars have begun. In the end, Nathaniel cannot keep control. No longer in charge of anything coherent, Nathaniel sides with the primates. They welcome him gladly, but the other dinosaurs see him as a traitor. Meanwhile, Katie and Allison disappear and are not heard from again.

Allison’s forces are pushed back to four small pockets on the edge of the galaxy. Nathaniel once again has access to planet Candy. As the war rages on, Katie divides Nathaniel’s forces in two by holding the central bulge of the galaxy between her two opposing quadrants. Nathaniel later takes it back, dividing Katie’s forces, and detonating superbombs around the circumference to prevent the arrival of reinforcements. At the same time, having finally found the last of Nathaniel’s superbomb factories, Allison destroys all of them at once. Allison begins to make a comeback by taking territory from both Katie and Nathaniel, but then Katie plots something desperate.
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She alerts adults everywhere, informing them that Allison and Nathaniel have not “cleaned their rooms.” The adults strike, redrawing the borders and grounding Allison’s and Nathaniel’s forces until every planet is spotless. They are not even allowed to leave their toys on the beach for a few minutes. Unfortunately for Katie, the adults do the same to her forces, claiming she has the messiest room of all – and they also punish her for tattling. As soon as the adult threat passes, the trizeka war resumes, but Katie never recovers from her mistake.

The boy-girl war is not quite over, but the boys are winning. Suddenly, a new group that is neither boy, girl, nor adult emerges and rapidly gains followers. These beings play sports, a form of play that is active like boy play is, but mindlessly suppresses creativity and individual initiative like girl play does. The leader of this new group is Katie. Like girls, her armies are well-unified and skilled at manipulating adults. Like boys, they are fast, brave, and strong. Their smarts are midway between the two. Pretending to be either boys or girls, her millions of agents are able to infiltrate and somehow convert others to her side. Her armies then attack with attendant cheerleading cheeraliens, psychosymbiotic mutants that feed off sports play. Cheeraliens have scaly bodies, skinless faces, eat their own fingers, poop constantly, vomit fire, and worst of all they cheer.
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The losses are catastrophic. Allison takes over what is left of the girls and Nathaniel takes over what is left of the boys, initiating a three-way conflict later called the trizeka war. The war is primarily driven by the force of personality of the three trizekas and it gets very personal.