We entered the town rolling through the town and around the makeshift barriers built by the occupying soldiers earlier. Everyone had been gathered in the center of town so this should be pretty straightforward once the ball gets rolling.

As we entered the area around the superstore and pulled into the parking lot, we saw groups of people all over the area crying and hugging each other. It seemed everyone was just trying to process what had happened in such a short period of time. Most people were lost after things had turned so dark and were just happy to see that their friends and family were ok.

There was one smaller group of people that seemed to stand out as they were all grouped together in a quiet conversation without anyone around them. Minerva identified them as outliers directly after we took control of the city as they went to their families and then separated not long after that to their isolated group.

I stopped the Puma outside of their group as the drones got into formation around us while we exited the vehicle. They all turned to us and waited for our approach. It seemed they understood we were the ones to rescue them, but they seemed puzzled when Tom got out of the Puma beside me.

Tom approached them scratching his head.

“Hello everyone, are you all ok?”

A slightly larger man approached Tom dressed in worn work clothes that had patches sewn into them all over.

“Tom! I’m so glad to see that you’re alright!”

He approached Tom and wrapped him up in a big hug before setting him back down and pulling him to arm’s length. Then he promptly punched Tom in the face causing him to fall backward and land on the ground with his nose bleeding.

Minerva approached the situation quickly and placed one of her drones in between the two of them as 2 more circles around each side of them. Tom put his hands up and told her to back off as he got back up off the ground. She pulled back, but maintained a much closer distance between the two of them,

“Back off Minerva! Heh, sorry Greg, I guess I deserved that.” Tom said as he got up off the ground wiping the blood from his face.

“Yea, you bet your ass you did! I am glad to see that you’re alive, but just so I could give you that punch you deserved. I can’t believe you would use me as a distraction. I got my ass beat for hours after you set me up so you could escape. I can’t believe you would do that to me. You could have at least told me about it beforehand.”

“Yea man, I’m sorry I just couldn’t stay here anymore. I knew I wouldn’t last long when they started taking people and they didn’t return. I shouldn’t have used you as a decoy, but I got reinforcements.”

Tom backed up and pointed at me as he introduced me. I had seen most of these people around town, but I had no real idea of who they were outside of hearsay. I walked over to Tom as he was being led back to the group of people in the square.

“Hello, I’m Robert, I’ve heard of a few of you. I’m the one who took control of the town once again.”

Minerva dropped in front of me and did a little dance back and forth with one of her drones.

“Yes, you did a lot as well. This is Minerva and she is an artificial intelligence I’ve designed to help with safety in the future.”

The people in the circle seemed wary of me and backed up a little bit as she got closer to them. Looks like they’re still wary of a force that could take out their previous captors. Right now, would be a very vulnerable time and there is no guarantee that they were safe just because their prior conflict was resolved.

“Could we go somewhere a little more private to discuss things? I assume the people here need some time to get themselves together and ensure their family and friends are safe. I have Minerva patrolling the area, so everyone should be safe for now.”

A woman with golden hair stepped forward and introduced herself as Helen. She directed us back to the store and led us to the break room.

Helen was the first to stand up once we got our seats. “What do you intend to do with us now that you’ve taken control of the city. It’s obvious you’re not part of the military. Do you know what’s going on?”

This was an obvious concern for everyone around as they all seemed to reflect her thoughts as they nodded and chimed in with various words of affirmation.

I went into an explanation of how I understood things so far, leaving out my access to the Library World and the magic I had access to for now. They all seemed to be fairly understanding of things as they had similar observations to mine.

“My main goal, for now, was to take control of the town back from the people occupying it. I plan on building the town back up in the future and would like to work with all of you to turn this back into a functioning society. I haven’t been able to contact anyone through any means of communication available to us before. My next goal is reaching out to the people around us to check their situation and help or initiate trade if possible.”

Several of the people in the room seemed to have more questions to ask, but they didn’t look like they would be trusting a power like myself for now. The rest of the conversation went by smoothly as we established rules for the city temporarily.

We needed to clean up the bodies from the battle so we had groups set up to take care of them. We then hashed out a schedule to clean the streets back up and get our lanes of transportation cleared back up. We would need a clear network of roads to move things around the town for rebuilding and fortification. I had Minerva direct all of the people involved in the control of the town to the police station in town and we selected people to cover shifts to watch over them. We would need to address their punishments before long, but they could wait until we had a good base for everyone to stand on until then. They would make good indentured servants to work off their sentences depending on their involvement in the occupation.

We finished up the meeting with my request for workers at the compound. I needed to get the factories moving, crops planted, and people in the school to proceed on the timeline I had planned.