In between Sama and Briggs’ vacations, human nature, the desires of the poor to get ahead, and the natural ascent of the power of mages over others always reared their heads. The infamous criminal elements of the country would move in, steadfastly ignoring the fate of those before them.

Travelers were ambushed, natives were extorted and forced to work fields, were used as virtual slave labor, or perhaps even recruited if they had any gifts of magic to add to the incessant bandit gangs that either arose almost spontaneously or gathered around those coming in from the cities and provinces with greater populations.

The standard strategy of the gangs was to force the peasantry hereabouts to grow illegal crops, or highly-specialized magical ones, instead of food. That way they could make an excellent profit, and food had to be transported in, giving them a stranglehold on the villagers who would starve if they did not farm. It was an old and proven system, and it required persistent violent behavior year after year to fend off.

Mexico’s army was largely made up of conscripts. Its officers were scions of Families who were often profiting from those schemes, or were blackmailed into accepting them. The conscript soldiers did not have the power to defy the gangs, and often ended up joining them or being paid by them to ignore what was happening. Those factions who were more powerful were likewise coerced into looking the other way, or simply did not care as long as their own home territories were left alone.

The system had been in place for a long time, and then Sama and Briggs had the temerity to come through not just once, but with regular vacations down here, year after year. They slaughtered bandits and those backing them, be they in government or if they were just Crime Families growing their power with endless waves of disposable minions.

Sama had told me the first Archmage and first Sage she had ever killed had both been down here. The shock of the latter dying was felt all across Mexico and collapsed eight Families when he passed on so suddenly. She’d offed nearly a dozen generals, over a score of colonels, three provincial governors, and a lot of crime bosses, too, for their parts in these schemes.

It didn’t stop the continued attempts by the Crime Families to expand, and it had generated a lot of assassination attempts on the two of them over the years. It was all fine, as Briggs and Sama enjoyed their vacations down south tremendously. The crazy caveman and his Hag of a woman had the status of local folk heroes, and if they weren’t the gloriously beautiful stars of the movies, that just made them all the more relatable to these people with little to no magic of their own.

How they knew things were happening was of course via the Marks. Every place they stopped, they’d measured some of the locals, recruited them quietly, Tatted them up, and then never talked or spoken to them again, save through the Marks. Those people always avoided them, spoke about them only if forced to do so, and let Sama and Briggs know every time a new bandit group rolled in to extort them, or to loot and pillage.

Like one was doing right now.

“Senor Diego Juarez, would you like to come out here for a moment?” I asked, and everyone within a mile turned as my Voice echoed in their ears.

I eyed the frantic attempt to call out on my Jammer. “I can, of course, rip apart your home and bring you out here by force, Senor Juarez. Perhaps that would be your preference?”

The attempts to call out stopped. A moment later, the door of one of the adobe brick buildings opened, and a short middle-aged man, in the ubiquitous white cotton attire and broad-brimmed circular hat of the peasantry, stepped out of his home, staring at me fearfully.

I waved him over with a friendly smile. Under the eyes of many friends and neighbors who were looking out their doors and windows, he shuffled over to me.

I was tall for a woman, and Driver Sam was a looming gringo hulk, with pale skin that defied the sun and everything. His Sidearm and tonfa-style Scepter also had the invisible pressure of magical things, and he was dressed for combat, with the stance and demeanor of lots and lots of killing things behind him.

Senor Juarez was barely over five feet tall, and had no magic whatsoever.

“You’ve been working with the bandit crew that started working the area a month ago,” I told him as he came to a stop in front of me. His mouth opened to deny it, but I just kept on. “Yes, I see they gave you a phone to call them with any updates. You gave them the names of people you didn’t like and who were speaking out against them after they took your daughter as a hostage, or perhaps a recruit? Ah, she has magical ability, no wonder. Given her rebellious streak, she may even have joined them, who knows?

“Where are they lairing? Oh, at the old ruins to the northeast over there in between roving around? Well, they aren’t the first, so they won’t be the last, either. I see you’re getting paid some extra money and food for your good, hard work. Well, I suppose that makes you comfortable while you sell out the other villagers. Yes, yes, I know you had no choice, they would have just killed you and gotten someone else to do the job,” I said soothingly as his jaw flapped, trying to keep up with me as I read his mind faster than he could answer. “I’m sure they sent your name on, too, so the next time this happens they’ll come right to you as their snitch. And guess what? You’re going to do the job again, and again, and again, so that your friends and neighbors don’t have to. After all, you’re already good at it and qualified, and you kind of enjoy the power and fear it generates for you.”

A lightning bolt crackled down out of the sky at the edge of town behind us. A combat team of operators from Coralost materialized on the Seal out there, led by the Mick, and under the eyes of the townsfolk, their Earth Wave headed off towards the northeast at great speed.

In about half an hour, that bunch of bandits was going to be in the last firefight of their lives.

“Everyone here heard that, right? Senor Juarez is the duly appointed informer for any bandit gangs who come through in the future. He’ll do the job right, so you don’t have to!”

“My, my daughter-!” he managed to blurt out.

“If she’s still alive, I’m sure she’s managed to take care of herself, considering who her father is,” I told him soothingly. “Now, if the elders of the town could wander over here, I’ve got a few things to say to everyone, and I’m going to need some feedback and buy-in from everyone.”

The locals looked at one another, and more doors opened as the seniors and most influential members of the community, including the local priest of the Church of Light, started gathering to me. Senor Juarez was clearly uncomfortable with all the angry eyes on him, but I just bade him stand there calmly.

“You’ve probably figured out I’m here at the behest of Sama and Briggs.” Relieved smiles broke out all around, and they nodded eagerly at my words. Their heroes had come to deliver them once again! “They apologize for not coming in person, but, hey, they have people now, who just so happen to love taking out bandits, brigands, robbers, and their bosses.” Evil chuckles arose knowingly from those around.

“Now, what this effectively means is that they are claiming your village as one of their territories. I hate to have to do this to you, but it’s the only way to stop the constant return of the bandits. We’re going to have to have a formal relationship, even if it’s totally illegal, to stop this stuff from coming back, year after year.” I looked around at all of them, the angry people nodding slowly, one by one, waiting to hear the rest of it.

“The goal of Sama and Briggs is to train you all up to take care of yourselves. They don’t need your money, and they aren’t going to make you pay by raising Dream Poppy or the like here. What they are going to do is open a small shop here, a factory you can work at if you choose to, and help manage the town to increase its strength.

“You all know that the system of dons is broken, and they suck up all the money and wealth for themselves, leaving you with nothing but the same thing or less, year after year. This does not help your villages at all.

“So, we are going to do two things here.” I extended my hand, and Shaped up a column in the middle of the village’s central plaza, rising up a good thirty feet as they watched, bas-relief carvings of a crossed sword and hammer on a shield dominating it up and down, Coralost’s sign. “First of all, you all are under their protection. Sama doesn’t care if it’s the governmental army coming to shake you down or the newest bunch of crooks out of Tijuana. If they try something here, there’s going to be a mess.”

“It is all they deserve!” a shrewish-looking woman in colorful scarves spat with feeling.

“Their officers, perhaps. Remember most of the soldiers come from places just like this. They only pick on you because you aren’t family,” I reminded them. “So, the goal is to make them not want to come here at all.

“Now, I’m not saying you’re going to rebel, because that’s dumb. You’re going to pay your honest taxes and on time, and not a bloody peso more. If the government wants to officially levy more, well, it turns out that when those officials have a choice between removing a levy, or dying messily and having their successors remove the levy, they tend to pick the former. Of course, that works better when they know if they dare apply the levy they’re going to die, and so there’s no levy in the first place.”

White grins broke out all around. This was the kind of thing they liked to hear!

“Some things are going to be happening here. Briggs does not want to be supplying your food. So, some mages with skill in agriculture and Plant Magic are going to be coming down here on a regular basis, making sure your fields are in good shape, and showing you how to grow food.

“If you’ve got enough food growing, we can look into other crops for cash, but for now, we want you self-sufficient.

“To keep the mages away who are making your life Hell, we’re going to be turning the whole village and part of the surrounding farmlands into a White Mana Zone. This will stop most mages from being able to Cast spells inside here.”

Their eyes all widened in shock at the idea. The priest was a Novice Light mage, and I could see he was troubled by the idea, but I also noticed the flash in his eyes as he realized just how much it would even the scales here. His loyalty was here, to the people, not the thieving mages!

“Furthermore, one of the things you’re going to be doing is making some ammunition for those things.” I gestured as Driver Sam drew his Grit Sidearm, the sleek black metal in his large hands oozing threat. I pointed down the street, and everyone turned as slender columns came out of the ground and clay pots formed on the tops of them.

Driver Sam lifted his pistol and fired rapidly, squeezing out the rounds with the practice of a lot of ammunition expenditure.

The bangs made them all flinch, and they gawked in shock as the pots exploded one after another from the impact of unseen slugs fired downrange.

“Consider those to be about equal to human heads... human heads not protected by magic.”

Their eyes all lit up at the idea of finally being able to defend themselves, and then hardened. They were afraid of mages because they had no way to fight, but that didn’t mean they were a people who weren’t willing to fight. Without weapons or magic, there was just no point!

Give them both, and, well, they were a tough people in a tough land, living with death every day threatening them from both the land and the sea, as it were.

“One of the things you’re going to be making is the ammunition for weapons like this.” There were some hums deep in their throats as they stared hungrily at the pistol, watching closely as Driver Sam disengaged the magazine, pulled a handful of bullets out of a pouch, and loaded them into the mag one by one, smoothly and efficiently, before sliding it back up into the grip and holstering the pistol under his arm.

“The White Mana Zone is also very uncomfortable to the Aquatic Beasts who might want to come ashore. It won’t protect your fishermen unless they stay close to shore, but the creatures are going to hate the stillness of the place.

“Also, the fields inside the Zone are going to be improving noticeably in their yields. It’s a largesse you’re going to have to share, and not just profit from being lucky enough to own land there,” I warned them, but some of the older farmers didn’t hide their delight regardless.

“One of the things that I’m going to be doing here is putting in new roads, walls, wells, sewers, and moving your homes around and about to improve the spacing you have and make it easier to maintain the village. Yes, yes, I know none of you want your houses shifted and you want everyone else’s houses to move instead, so I’m doing everyone and everything at once. This would normally cost your village hundreds of thousands of pesos, and I’m doing it for free, so suck it up and be quiet!” The complaints were quickly quashed at my words.

“If you have special projects you want me to do, like more rigidly defining fields and borders, digging some ditches quickly, evening out the land or the like, let me know right now so I can fit them into my plans. I don’t have all day, and I can get a lot more done faster than the help that is coming after me.

“Let’s go, people. Let me hear your dreams and things you’ve been waiting forty years to get done.” A hologram of the village and the fields around it flickered into existence between them, and they all stared at it as I began to rearrange things in town, reading the surface thoughts they didn’t want to speak aloud, and then started doing the same with the local fields...