Rebuild the town, and help the humans

“You’re all going to help liberate this town you’ve taken over,” Tally commanded. “Release any humans you have prisoner, return everything you’ve stolen, and help this community get back on its feet.”

Tally’s order was met with a rather lukewarm perception. As Tally looked across the faces of his new harem, he saw the conflict of their attempts to reconcile their enthusiasm to obey, with taking **** offense at the suggestion that they should do a 180 on this invasion they’ve put so much hard work into.

“Brim,” Tally whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “you said nothing I said would make them think less of me. What gives?”

“Oh, they still love you,” Brim reassured him, “I think they’re just getting cold feet about what you’re asking them to do. This is going pretty fast, expecting these people to completely abandon their warlike lifestyles as your very first command. They will obey, don’t worry, it’s just a bit much too soon.”

“Come on guys,” Mi stepped in to back Tally up. “This is no way to treat our new leader, is it?”

There was a smattering of half-assed ‘okay’s and ‘understood’s, but still no sign of genuine support. Tally noticed in the crowd that Kraya, who was one of the only ones who had spent a decent amount of time with him since being brainwashed, was also one of the only ones cheering on his orders without question. Tally saw her trying to hype some of the others up to be a bit more eager.

“Maybe my hearing is going,” Mi slowly began to ramp up her voice to parade ground volume, “because I didn’t hear all of you reply with ‘Yes, sir’!”

This time, all Mi’s warriors finally acknowledged Tally’s command fully. “Yes, sir!”

“Thank you, Mi,” said Tally, who was genuinely grateful to have her to wrangle her warriors on his behalf. “By the way,” he asked her, “is there a human resistance group fighting against your occupation?”

“Not here, specifically,” Mi told him. “I squashed a burgeoning rebellion in this town just last week- nothing left. But my commanders report that there’s is an organized resistance in other areas, that they can’t quite squash. Like they expect me to do something about it from all the way out here.”

“Good,” Tally replied. “We need to embolden those resistance groups. Leak your most secret intelligence to them, let them steal your supplies, anything that will get their momentum going. They’re going to be key to your downfall.”

Mi nodded, instantly on-board with Tally's plan. “I can start deliberately moving sensitive materials where the rebels have the best chances of stealing them. My commanders will blame me for poor planning, but they won’t suspect I’m doing it on purpose for a long time.”

“Excellent,” Tally clapped his hands together. “But right here, locally speaking, there’s no need to be sneaky. I want the humans around here to be gossiping about how the invaders suddenly turned friendly. They’ll probably think it’s a trick at first, but if you keep being helpful and kind, eventually they’ll come to accept you.”

“I'll go down and announce a truce right now,” Mi said. “Did you catch that?” She raised her voice so the surrounding cluster of warriors could hear. “Starting now, we’re going to be nice to the humans. No more competitive tyranny like I used to encourage. We’re turning over a new leaf.”

Tally remained hidden at the monsters’ outpost, so no one would realize there was someone pulling the strings. As far as the poor subjugated occupants of the town were concerned, Mi Iau just came out one day of her own volition, to claim that she and her warriors had renounced their evil ways. She asked all who came to hear her speak to spread the word to the rest of the modest remains of the town’s population.

Rumors abounded, and the prevailing theory was that it was some kind of cruel joke, just as Tally had expected. Mi Iau’s warriors made regular reports to him to let him know the status of the public’s perception from the time they spent down there. ‘The humans used to be scared of us’, they would complain, ‘but now they just seem to hate us’. Tally told them to give it time, and to continue to commit to peace. They of course obeyed him, whether or not they thought he was right.

After about two weeks of the invaders doing nothing but helping out, returning lost property, repairing smashed-up houses, distributing medicine to people they’d wounded, and just generally acting kind instead of like grown-up schoolyard bullies, the tides started to change. The remaining humans started to accept their generosity with gratitude instead of suspicion. Some of the monsters even made friends with some of the humans- on Tally’s orders of course, they would never be interested in befriending human filth otherwise- but those who tried it found their own bigoted hatred of humans beginning to fade away. Not just magically erased like in the specific case of Tally, but a genuine reformation. They soon began doing nice things even without Tally specifically ordering them to.

Meanwhile, Mi Iau was using all the free time now that she no longer had a campaign to run, to instead run a masked smuggling operation to feed the human resistance she’d tried so hard to snuff out. She’d been keeping tabs on places where pockets of rebels seemed to be coming from, originally in preparation for sending in warriors to wipe them out. But now, that same intelligence was useful as a way to make sure plenty of supply crates, supposedly being distributed amongst her own forces, fell into the rebels’ hands instead.

Sure enough, before long she started getting angry letters from her immediate subordinates, saying that if she stopped meddling with their routes and just let them run things, this wouldn’t keep happening. This gave Mi the perfect excuse to scold them for daring tell her how to do her job as general, and double-down on the practices she knew were helping the human rebels. Her subordinates could only sit there, fuming.

Only, Mi could only keep this up for so long before her superiors got wind of her constant self-sabotage.