Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

Bagel was having a hard time figuring out how to help himself to a piece of New York City real estate. The shop itself was the first level of a multi-level multi-use building. Above him, there were a small series of apartment buildings that he knew nothing about. He never traveled up there before.

It made no sense to him how humans did things, but because of the pest constraint of the size of the city, of course they built up. If he bought the building, did that mean that he owned the apartments above? Janet was going to have to do some work for him because apparently humans didn't always buy their buildings, especially where he lived.

Humans used a lease where they rented apartments. Did that mean that they had a time when they didn't live there? Bagel was adamant that this was the thing that he would never have to deal with. He would never lose if he had a choice in a matter. After all, he needed to be the handsomest boy in two blocks. One block was not going to be enough for him.

He had also heard tales of an underground system of tunnels that people would call the subway. Though he knew it didn't stretch underneath his building.

He discovered a basement to the building that was rarely used and full of shelf stable goods. He found it out when his worker realized that someone was trying to get into it.

"Boss, come over here. Look at this," Janet said.

Bagel ran out the door, only pausing for long enough to get recognition of who was doing the deed.

The worker that had been there before the system arrived was standing there staring at him.

"Bagel?"

"Raul? Raul!"

Cat and the man had a standoff for a while. Raul looked stunned.

If there was anyone that had been consistent in his life so far, it had been Raul. The man rode on the subway to work his eight to twelve hour shifts at the store. He talked to everyone.

Raul was the one with the most head pats. The owner of the store liked to keep him around so he could kill mice and just be busy like cats.

Raul just liked him.

"I'm sorry. Did you just speak to me? I know I shouldn't have left Queens." Raul blinked several times and rubbed his eyes. He didn't pinch himself.

"I assure you that the boss is real," Janet said. "He's just the new owner since the system took over."

Raul stood there, his mouth open. Then his mouth and brain caught up to each other. "So what you're telling me is that as soon as I left, you got a deck of cards. You learn how to speak and now you are running. The shop that I worked at for five years? Will wonders never cease?"

His sarcastic tone fit in well.

Bagel's pre-system memories were fuzzy. He just remembered being happy when Raul showed up and not that. He was sad when Raul was left, but it was like there was a gaping hole left there. He would never admit that to anybody, but the sense remained.

The feelings were still there despite his changeover. Had someone called this love before? He wasn't sure, but he wanted to be happy, and he also wanted Raul to be happy.

"I guess you've got some questions?"

"Where were you?" Bagel said. He stepped forward. Behind them in the street, somebody slayed another pizza rat and hooted. But neither one looked away.

"I'm so sorry Bagel, I didn't. I didn't think about taking you with me. It's just that things happen so fast and I had to take care of my family first and…"

Suddenly Bagel was being wrapped up in a hug and he was sobbing and he didn't even know where this wetness came from.

Handsome boys didn't cry.

That's right. This was definitely just some sort of allergy to whatever Raul had put into his hair for sure. It was something that his mind recognized as eucalyptus scented.

"I'm so sorry I left. I didn't know I wasn't thinking and,"

The tears wouldn't stop flowing. Bagel froze, unsure of what to do.There was nothing he could do.

They just sat there, holding onto the moment. He felt at peace with the world. Everything that had come up with all the minor changes. The little mobs that kept spawning everywhere, the dungeons of the system, even Janet and the girls. For a moment, he ignored all of that. He was a man who knew him and knew what he needed. Bagel himself didn't even know that he needed this, but he had.

He just hadn't known.

But he found the thing he had been missing that afternoon. He found it and he was grateful.

"I don't know what to say. Raul. I never expected this and things have just been crazy."

"Well, I'm here now, so if you want, you can come home with me." The man wiped a tear from his eye. "That would be nice, wouldn't it? I have a nice place with my family. It's small, but you'll be safe, fed, and sheltered there, away from the streets."

Bagel tilted his head at the man. "Why would I ever want to leave? This place is my home."

"I just thought you… you know what never mind. I'm sorry I should ask you what you want and I just came back here. Nothing felt right, and I guess I was hoping that I would get my job back. We still have rent to pay. Heck, I still have to feed my family."

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Bagel nodded. He could use some help. Not only that, the or rather the man knew what was going on and had to run the shop.

A flood of feelings hit him when he realized that. Maybe the human that had come back for him was going to leave again and he didn't know how he would deal with that. Raul had been in his life for so long and he hadn't even appreciated it. He didn't have words to appreciate anything.

"Thank you for being there for me. I know it was a job for you, but to me, you were part of my life. I can't really remember it before."

"I think nothing of it," Raul said. "But I was serious about needing a job. I don't suppose you know who's in charge there now, do you? "

For the first time since he started talking, his eyes were dry.

"I think we can work something out."

After all, the cat needed some help.

---

"All right boss, so here's the deal. The one next door? Now. I heard credits, but the system is saying that if you buy that one, the next one's going to be 1,000. The one after that it's going to be about 5,000 credits because it's a larger apartment building and it's something like 10 floors instead of the five that our first two buildings are and that's if you keep going down south on 2nd avenue. If you go west on forty fifth Street, the Chinese food place is 500 credits and the parking deck next to it is 2,000. There's no rhyme or reason to any of this."

Janet, having taken her time to get all of her information together, was presenting it all to Bagel. Bagel appreciated knowing the relevant facts, though he was kind of missing when apparently the humans called context.

Raul backed him up. "So I think what bagel's going to want to know? Here is how much money the shop is making every day to kind of judge whether we should do that."

Bagel, as was natural, was holding court in his shop. The attendees were his cook, his worker role, and Janet. He just needed them to figure out what was going on with this. The rarity of his ability to buy the land inside of the system and own it was something that he was unprepared to reveal.

"The TV shows are saying at least the news is saying that anyone who can buy up these places, the city, is going to support you. It looks like you need a special card to buy up land and you have one of those cards."

Bagel knew all too well about the games that the humans play called Monopoly, and no matter how many times Raul tried to explain that this wasn't like Monopoly. Bagel was still thinking about how he would expand his empire slowly.

"How much for the entire block?" Bagel asked.

Raul held up a hand. Janet beeped inconsequentially.

"I don't know if we're asking the right question here. Bagel, you understand that if we buy this block of land, no mobs can spawn on it. That in itself makes this place safer and is going to drive the rent upstairs to a place where people are going to want to live there. But it is possible. It is 100% possible that a mob could spawn some place where no one's watching and then get inside of the building. Joe, we can stop that, we can make this black Mars, then we can get ahead of what's happening here. Heck, just buying this place gives us teen feet out in front of us from the system we have to be."

"In order to buy the roads, we need to have bought a building on the side of it," Janet said. "That is the only way to stop these mobs from spawning. Nobody knows if the mob's going to get worse, but if we can control what they are, then we can control the supply and fewer people will die."

---

"They're doing what now? Why are they not helping each other out?"

Janet released a sound most close to approximating a sigh. "Just because people here are willing to pitch in and help out doesn't mean that it's the same everywhere."

"They're doing something outside to stem the tide. But if things keep changing, does the system keep spawning monsters? At some point in time it's going to be too much. I had to go on my way to fight some mobs on my way here and I was just well. I don't know what I was doing."

"Your landlord wanted you to pay for your rent so you decided to come back to see if you could get a job."

Bagel had so many questions but he didn't even know what to ask. "How do you know the people are dying?"

Janet displayed a screen. It showed a count of a very large number and it also displayed something that he could not understand.

He looked to someone to translate what was actually happening because he could not make either ears or tails of it. Raul shrugged.

"Have you been hiding something from us?" He didn't know if the glare would produce a better answer from the drone, but it definitely did normally from humans. Why would a drone be any different than a human?

"Look boss. It's not that I don't think you deserve to know. It's just that sometimes there are things that happen... Things that I think might be hard for you to understand."

"And you think people dying is something that I won't be able to understand?"

Janet flashed purple. He was learning her tells. Purple meant that she might be holding something back or embarrassed.

He was really narrowing down on that emotion. It's not like you could tell just by her stance what she was feeling. A floating sphere did not have a stance.

Even though he had been among humans his entire life, that didn't mean that he was able to just at a glance see what was going on with them. He might know human body language, but this drone was a different thing entirely.

If she was going to not tell him something then he was going to let her feel the full unbridled wrath of the bodegas best cat.

Janet flashed purple. "Look I didn't want to show you this but the system has been a little quirky and some people are getting some information and some are not."

"Back home, it felt like there was an information blackout but then I went on the internet. People were posting about all the things they were seeing. Somebody started this deck builder website where people uploaded the stats of their cards and stuff and now they're speculating on the cost of cards and who would pay what for what card and if it would pay with it with credits or cash."

Bagel gave a heaping amount of side eye to his AI assistant. It was hard to do that when she was floating above him.

"On it boss. I'll have those numbers downloaded into the database and there they are. If anything, we are under charging for these cards but also there's no central card clearing house that's selling these anywhere. You can say they were one of a kind, but we're probably just one of the first."

Has he watched she changed the prices, increasing the amount of points needed for the pizza rat cards to fifty five credits, and giving each of the rest of the cards a ten percent increase. Still, no one had bought the gentrifier crab card yet.

He had perhaps, been a little bold pricing it so high.

"Oh that's a good card, bro. Said inspecting it. That is a lot of specific text about effects. Gentrifier crab? How did you get this?" Raul was holding up the card and looking at it very closely.

"Good thing we price it so high," Bagel said. "People were just coming in here and selling their cards to us on the regular and we keep selling more of these to people that don't have the time to do their own mob enforcement."

"Please don't call it mob enforcement. That's going to sound really weird if a police officer walks in here."

And then, a police officer walked in.