Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

The deal was struck. Unfortunately, Bagel didn't have any extra warehouse cards but that didn't matter at that exact moment. The pigeons had a plan that didn't involve them.

Meatball spent some time with the Pigeons as the boght up half of the streets in the area. The pigeons didn't want to buy much. Besides that. They called in a bunch of favors and got people to come in with credits until they had the entire block next to Chelsea Piers. It was a significant change that took Meatball more than two hours as Chelsea adventurers guild members trickled in.

"At this point in time... we're going to have to have you come back at a different day." Blue was adamant that they show up again the next day. He was going to have the adventurous guilds start having people transfer credits to a few specific people.

"We can return tomorrow," Bagel said. "Get as much as you can together."

"That shouldn't be a problem. Thank you for your wisdom on how to start putting this together. Now we have another matter."

Bagel knew what was coming but he wasn't entirely prepared for it. It was the big ask. But they had negotiated the terms.

"Have you ever heard of a place called West Virginia?"

---

"I don't know if I can appreciate that as much as you think. I want to appreciate that. Even though it's a cute anime girl. That's just not exactly what I want when I'm buying my coffee."

Ashley had decided to try out the mobile coffee shop. Or at least the little coffee stand that one of the jelly side layer cats had set up.

"I feel like it goes with the motif. Humans always want to experience the best of life right? Aren't anime girls like the best of life?"

"Did Todd tell you that...That sounds like something Todd would say."

She sip the coffee in front of the adventurers guilt where Copernicus had set up his coffee stand for the day. It was like he was trying to take advantage of the people without him understanding why people enjoyed art and the experience of being in a coffee shop. Penny Lane, the Beatles themed coffee shop, was right there.

It was like he was trying to fail upwards. It was at best... A fundamental rudimentary misunderstanding of what humans wanted anywhere else except for in the city.

Unfortunately it was damn good coffee.

Ashley sipped her guilty pleasure drink. There was some special spice to it, most likely whatever the cat has his valet put in. And it was definitely the valet. All that the cat in question did was stand by and keep a look out. He probably didn't need to be there.

She didn't but it was good to show face City adventurers guild at large. There was so much going on that she felt like she even spend extra time working the administrative desk just to keep abreast of everything.

"Are you ready for this?"

"More or less. I can't think of anything else that you would do everyone's gotten the best deck they can get with whatever cards they've gotten and they've all slept at any pertinent perks. You even stopped bringing in new cats just in case."

He sounded like he was trying to be opaque but in the end, she was pretty sure she could see where I threw him if she wanted to. He was scared about becoming a faceless nobody. Or perhaps he wanted that and this was just him trying to vent some steam. After all, who didn't want to be recognized for helping out heroes. Was it exploitative? Perhaps.

But she talked it over with Kate and they had seen jellyside layer as a necessary part of their mission.

The other question that she had was if jellyside layer saw them as necessary part of their mission. The adventurous guild kept them safe and at no cost. Members even invested in their holdings.

Their honestly wasn't much other use for the credits at this time. The system recognized them, making them ineffectively held tender. The powers that be couldn't get their act together. It was like they had traded in one set of rules for a slightly different set.

"What's next for you?"

It would be easier if she just got him talking. Maybe if she began to admire him he would give up something. It wasn't that she wanted to work against him but he was the one that was directing their funds and surely he saw what was happening.

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"Meatball has made contact with the pigeons and we've secured a deal. We just bought up more land to one swoop than we had for most of the day's previous. The pigeons are going to be heading out to get as many warehouse cards as they can. I can't imagine they'll be back soon."

"...And how do you feel about meatball being liaison with the pigeons? Can I have another coffee please."

The valet quickly filled up her cup. The second sip was not nearly as good as the but it was still the same coffee and she began to feel a little. Just a slight twinge of jitters. Of course it could just be her being nervous about the upcoming potential change to whatever the system was going to do to fuck with them. He was going to be ready for whatever it was and so was she.

Copernicus flicked his tail. "We need more shops. Not only that, we need more places where we can just buy food with credits. Or at least the humans do. Having the bodega but then needing Bagel to constantly refresh the stock has been really draining on him."

He had a little seat installed next to the cart. It looked luxurious to sit in but it was definitely made with a cat in mind. It was low as if he wanted people to look down upon him but not so low that he could touch the ground. Perhaps he hadn't gotten the memo that humans wanted to be higher or taller to show dominance.

"He hadn't said much about that. Are you sure that he's really being drained?"

"He doesn't want to show weakness in front of you. In fact, he didn't even want to tell me, but I knew that he shouldn't be collapsing the way that he's using his powers is just draining him too much. Each time you summon a card it takes something and you can't really out level fatigue."

There was no stamina statistic that she could look at. The fact she hadn't really looked at her character sheet in a while. The only big changes were the amount of energy she got and the perks she had chosen. And seeing the availability of what others had chosen for perks had meant that she really wanted to get a good one at level seventy five. There were so many useful synergies that she hadn't even considered that were now going to become an option with another perk.

But the real perk that she won right now was to even more coffee. Perhaps the third cup would would do the opposite of calming her nerves. She could see a cue of people lining up to talk to whoever was at the front desk right now. Most of them looked like they hadn't gotten a deck yet. She was going to have to look at those people to go on to patrol duty to make sure that none of their dungeons had outbreaks.

Their primary thing was putting the people with no experience into groups to guard a whole block of spawns. Everyone knew what the spawns were in certain areas. Turtle Bay was virtually covered in guild presence and they extended their influence a few blocks further until the other groups could take over. Even when there wasn't a guild person on duty, several people were just lounging around at little section of of straight to include the spawns that were inside of buildings. All the known spawns were heavily marked and large ed lines indicated where guild members could find sporting monsters at the correct time. They're only blessing was the fact that they cleared everything nearly instantly.

"And I suppose the guild is ready?" Copernicus said.

"We get by. We're always recruiting which is why I need to get you to direct more people to the sign up desk. We have more cards available everyday."

Copernicus gave her a concerned look. "At some point in time, we'll have reached a saturation of deck bearers here where they're going to have to go further afield to get new cards to fill out their decks, aren't we?"

"I think we talked to Bagel about setting up the thing we set up just south of the United Nations. We have a little enclave where mobs are allowed to spawn and hopefully that'll mean that the ones that are prevented from spawning go there instead."

Copernicus shuddered. "You want to know the real reason I left the financial district?"

Ashley was suddenly all yours and that cat was about to sing.

She gave him a nod to indicate for him to keep talking.

"Because of all the land that they bought up around my area, new spawns started spawning inside of my building. It was that and then the pressure phone. The humans that just wanted to buy the building and kick me out? They do not want to play fair."

"I can't imagine that they did. It's the same thing you're thinking of doing though, right? Except minus the kicking people out part."

"It's easier to charge you the rent for the place that they're living in then to kick them out. Plus like the system tells us that we own the thing. Why not make a little bit of profit off of it?"

"It's a slippery slope from there to people not being able to live anywhere because they're told that they have to have a landlord..." she said, finishing off her third coffee. "We forget forget that we used to lynch people for doing the wrong thing, or sometime just being a person."

"We can't get back to the way things were. We can only move forward and we want to move into a place where humans and cats are on the same level playing field."

And it made sense to her. Every mid-20s woman wants their cat to be able to speak to them and be a part of the gossip not just a impartial listener observer. This gave them a chance now to actually make friends with real cats. They were awakened, but it was so curious how it had come into becoming real actual beings with human like personalities that she would never predicted.

Never in a million years would she have thought that Copernicus would have been trying such Petty level entrepreneurship but it happened.

But here he was trying to be the coffee salesman on the block with his little cart. That was when she thought that perhaps something else was going on. Maybe he was trying to make deals out here? But who else would he be making deals with?

Perhaps it was time for her to ask some more questions with those that have been observing the cat.

"I'm all for us being on the same playing field," she said. "The only way out of this is together."

Copernicus nodded. "The only way through this is to be united."