Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

"The pigeons are making a move. I think we need to answer in kind. What I think we can do is get la noche on our side and then see if we can leverage our potential relationship," Gladys said.

" I just saw them buy up some land in Staten Island. So safe to say they're making moves. I don't think that the Right moves, of course because they picked a really weird angle, but they're not human and they're not planning this out like humans would."

"Can you say that again? What do you mean that they're not putting out like humans would?"

Early on in his tenure in the store, after you become awakened, Bagel had fashioned some catwalks around his store. It was to those special little immaculate piece of carpentry that he now referred to.

"Humans wouldn't make anything like this. I was thinking like a cat when I paid for these."

Gladys cracked a blue ox. "Are you saying that because their pigeons are going to think of this like they're sky rats? Or are you thinking that they have a particular way of thinking because they fly everywhere?"

"I didn't get until I thought about how the drones were. But now that I think about it that way, it makes perfect sense. They don't see things from street level unless they pause like we do. Their entire worldview is from the sky. So obviously they're going to pick the most good looking place for them to land."

"Presumably by good looking, you don't just mean aesthetically pleasing. You probably mean something else too. I'm curious as to what criteria you think the pigeons are using."

Bagel had a hunch. He had a bunch of half owned opinions from seeing so much drone activity and eyes in the sky, but he didn't know how much that played into how pigeons thought. They spend most of their time flying around? They couldn't because it had to be tiring. They had to start from the ground and then fly up didn't they?

That had to take a lot of energy. But once they were up it made sense that it was easier for them to stay there so long as the wind was good.

"I don't know. I I'm just thinking that they might have a reason they chose this spot. Besides the fact that it's a straight shot and Chelsea. I would have thought that they would go for governor's Island or at least that makes sense to me."

"They passed over governors island. Wait they could just buy up the Cereal bridge. Unless?"

Bagel shook his head no. "We can't buy up bridges. Mobs don't spawn there. It's why the first half mile of the bridge is a large encampment."

Gladys brought out her tablet. Bagel didn't even see a pocket. The woman was magic with her ability to hide things. "That makes a lot of sense. So how do we want to approach this?"

"We're going to have to make La Noche an offer. They can't refuse. It's the kind of thing that they're really want from us. If we give them one of those warehouse cards that we somehow acquired..."

Gladys face flushed. "You wouldn't..."

"I'm sorry, I apologize when I said we I meant one of our associates. Specifically, Khaleesi would be able to take care of that for us."

Khaleesi was getting long distance drones to pick up cards from West Virginia and fly them all the way to Manhattan. Because these cards were a very highly controlled item outside of the direct zone when they respond, each one was about the most valuable thing that anyone could buy. Bagel let her know that and no one's certain terms that he did not need to know how many actually arrived. If there was a little bit that got out to the general public it would be great, but anything that he got into the store would go directly to the NYPD and further on to the city government.

The city government had their own designs and how to buy up City lots. They had started off with a plan, but it seemed like a very unfocused mess based on how little have been bought up and how much of it was just very pricey real estate in downtown.

"So to go back to your point about what the pigeons want. They're going to want iconic things in Manhattan and they're going to try to find those things and..." Gladys stood there with her hand in the air, trying to make a point. "Did we give them the location..."

Bagel realized with a start that they might have given out the location. It happened to be part of their agreement. They had no such governing agreement with La Noche.

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"The pigeons have the location."

"Just because they had the location doesn't mean they're going to be able to go there or retrieve it. Even if they flew straight there and back, it was still only taking them at least a week or two. Then they had to stop and get food and it's just a whole mess."

Bagel nodded. "It would be a lot easier to just hire some humans to go there in a boat or a car."

He wasn't sure how long was actually going to take but he knew that humans could be there within 2 days if they drove there and back. The problem was the amount of times they would have had to stop in the way. McTavish, who had done the run, had told him that it took him four days early on. And that was 4 days in the best conditions. Big looked. Only imagine things would have gotten worse and people might have started to close off highways or bridges or tunnels just because they wanted to keep mobs from expanding everywhere.

"I think we need to talk to McTavish. He's been going back and forth. I think he's been there three times?"

Gladys made a note in her tablet. "I don't think I met McTavish before. Is he with one of the city departments?"

Bagel didn't recall. The man had a gruff demeanor and a very different way of speaking, which he'd heard on the television before, but outside of that he did not sound like a New Yorker. The city was a melting pot of culture's all meeting together though, so it could have just been that he had not been there long enough.

"Janet will fill you in with as much information as she can." His loyal artificial intelligence drone had been quieter as of late. She still did all the work that he requested of her, but it also felt like sometimes she's received into the background when Gladys had started taking over his operations.

"That will work. Alright before I head back to my nap and brunch did you want to talk about anything else? You know we have that meeting with la noche today."

Bagels eyes glazed over as he briefly considered things. "I think that we've got this well in hand. When they send the delegation we will be about as prepared as we could possibly be."

---

Bagel did not feel prepared. He didn't think that La Noche felt prepared either, but he was also predisposed to not thinking they had any kind of backup.

Having a human assistant was one of the things that help him translate what he wanted into something that humans around him could understand. He had no issues talking to cats about things. It was when he said one thing and humans interpreted a far different way than he intended. That was when he had an issue.

"I understand that you wanted to have this in the shadow of the United Nations building, but I don't understand why we're looking away from it?" Melpo, messenger from La Noche sat on an armchair that was so far out of place that it looped back around to being in place.

"We just wanted to watch. Do humans have a way of making things work really well when they want it to. It makes a lot of sense for us to be on the same page about the humans." Bagel was sitting on a wonderful folding chair with a plush bespoke pillow on top of it. Next to him, malpo was sitting on a similar chair and Copernicus was there, but he'd been out of it all day and only attended to listen in and offer a strategic advice.

"What do you think we're going to watch from this elevated position over this... Pit? I get that you got humans lined up all around but... Are they here to give us a show or?"

The sound came all at once. Hundreds of men and women were whistling around the open air pit. The sound went from slight to loud as five men ran into the center of the area as fast as they could. Behind them. Several mobs were following, either flying or running.

This group was pulling in mascots of various flavors which meant that they'd come all the way from midtown then probably run all down 42nd Street trying to pick up more mobs.

The first five men ran into the center of the pit. Dozens of summons appeared around them encircling them as to someone's face towards what they were dragging in. The assembled group of humans took out the ten or so mobs that followed the first five humans.

Then those five humans move to the side and another group of humans started running in bringing another clutch of mobs following them up the East Side highway straight into that area.

"Is this what they've been doing here all day?" Melpo said. "It seems utterly boring. It's predictable great but I don't know..."

Another group of humans ran in once that had been dispatched and they kept coming roughly two to three minutes apart. Each time, the group of humans around them would summon cards and annihilate the mobs that appeared.

"I just wanted you to understand where we're coming from here. These people? They're doing this for fun."

The squirrel shuddered. "We knew that many humans are very obsessed with their goals and desires. But this?"

"We could never coordinate this. As cats? This would never..."

That was the power of humanity. That was what he needed to tap into. And he needed to figure out if the squirrels had that kind of power among themselves or if they were using humans to do the same thing. It was a simple thing to figure out. But it would be a lot easier if they just told him what they were doing.

He wasn't one to volunteer information but this? Showing them how the humans did the arena here? This was something he was okay with showing. It wasn't a trade secret. It was just a humans being extra stupid about things in a group.

"I suppose we should be working together against this kind of thing."

"Long-term, the humans have never dealt with other awakened creatures on their planet so this is all going to be resolved in one way or the other. But if we don't have a chair at the table?"

The humans eviscerated another round of mobs.

Melpos eyes bulged. "I think that we are on the same page here. So it sounds like you're proposing that we have some sort of an alliance or at least a task and understanding that we're both to advance our species?"

"That is a point in which I'd like to start our discussion. Yes. If we can be on the same page with that? Then everything else is just a matter of us working out the details."

Bagel had never seen an evil smile on a squirrel before. He wasn't a big fan of this one but it looked like it was going to be getting him where he wanted to go and he would take that.