Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

"Now I know that both of you think you can enter here, but I said no animals and I kind of mean it. So if you would both kindly step outside," the security officer said. She was, to Bagel, beginning the motion that would end with her standing up.

That meant that she was probably getting serious.

Bagel had seen black women get serious before and he was ready to dart out of there like no one's business.

But the Falcon was still looking at him. And he still had his mounts. His arms up blocking the Falcon from any attempt to counter or attack because its first attempt had been an utter catastrophe.

"Look, ma'am," Ashley said. "We are just here to run this dungeon so that it doesn't overflow, and apparently, this Falcon deck bearer has decided that he wants to take us out. Is that correct? Mr. Falcon?"

"I will accept the cat as an offering."

"You know what?" Bagel said."That falcon actually looks kind of delicious. Maybe I should put them on the grill."

The staring contests between the cat and the Falcon had begun as the contest you see at a science fair at Middle School. However, it was quickly becoming the County Fair contest that had multiple interested parties, putting forth their best efforts to win a blue ribbon of some sort that had no value except to brag to one's book club.

"Bagel?" Kate said, her voice in a warning tone as if she wanted to win the contest. She wouldn't because she hadn't brought her a game today.

"Why don't the two of you make up and stop fucking around? Stop trying to eat each other and get the heck out of my store."

"We're here for a mission," Kate said. "Official city business. It just so happens that the cat is a deck bearer and also our heavy support."

"Oh, is that so?" the security guard said, her tone saying that not only did she not care, that she was looking for a reason to use her forty hours of security officer training offensively for the first time in over twelve years.

It was the training that gave police brutality a good name on a bad day.

At least if all the shows that Bagel had watched were true.

More and more Bagel was getting used to the idea that humans created this world through their fiction. That idealization was unrealistic. That was a place that had baklava. He also wanted to live in a place where he could exploit all the laps and head pats.

But for right now? He was wondering how long he would have to have a mob cook the bird to flavor it correctly.

In the back of his mind, the system was telling him that chicken needed to be cooked to 165° c or until pink or something. Bagel didn't even have tongs, so it wasn't like he was going to cook anything soon.

It was one thing for them to tear each other down, but Michael edged into the store with his mom. As the mob stepped back, the Falcon shifted, keeping his talons down and walking in. He wasn't entirely sure. The falcon also didn't have hands, meaning that it had to draw out somehow. Perhaps it was one of those questions for the ages that he could expect to ask his dinner.

"You guys are doing a dungeon, huh?" the falcon said uneasily.

"Yes, and if you would not be a pest, I'm sure that we would not mind having a fourth person along with us, or rather, a fourth deck bearer?" Ashley remarked.

"You want to take this bird with us?" Kate said. "He just tried to kill one of our party members."

"Maybe he'll kill whatever's inside of that dungeon. I don't know what's going to be in there. Maybe it's some gators. Maybe it's tiny mice or pigeons. It doesn't really matter, does it? Mr. Falcon, do you want some cards?"

There had been many times in animal history when things shifted.

The time the dinosaurs died was noteworthy.

One could also pinpoint the time that there's a tectonic plate shifted, causing split variants of different animals on different continents. But none were so earth-shaking as that moment when Bagel and the Falcon stopped their contest of staring each other down and both turned to look at the girls.

"What? You might as well get something out of it."

"You know what? That makes sense?" Ashley said. "I'm with it. If you want to join us, assuming Bagels is okay with that, you can come on in. I assume that you have some mobs that you can summon that will make you helpful in battle."

"I am but very," Bagel said, turning to glare at the bird. "Hungry."

"We're inside of a convenience store," Ashley said, extending her arms out. "You can basically have whatever you want to eat. Not including the bird. They even have beef jerky. That's meat from a cow which you don't get too often out here. Heck, I'll even buy it for you. I assume you don't have any money in there."

A large sign behind the counter at the Walgreens said that they did not accept credits. Ashley grumbled as she pulled something under her pockets and Bagel unclenched his jaw.

"I guess I'm okay with it if he pulls his weight. He doesn't seem very strong,"Bagel said. Bagel had his mount to walk them over to the dungeon entrance. It was easy to say that you could peer right into it. And it opened into what looks like another Duane Reade.

"You know if the dungeons are going to let us see inside of them like this; he said. It'd be easy for them to just report that in the dungeon app notes. Or maybe..."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Maybe what?" Ashley said.

"Maybe they're just leaving it out so they can do it later themselves."

"It makes sense," Kate said, paying for a stick of beef jerky and unwrapping it. She presented the prize to the Falcon, who looked like a puppy on its adoption day. She bought one of the larger, thicker ones.

"You could have bought me the ostrich meat one. I don't even know what an ostrich is, and it sounds delicious," Mr. Falcon said.

"Do you have a name, you reprobate," Bagel said. "Or should I keep calling you Mister Falcon?"

"Todd, will do. This human and deck builder insistence on naming conventions is so foreign to me I just had to ask someone what to say once and that's the result."

Bagel sat back in surprise. That had been the name at the top of the leaderboard. This Falcon was a killer, and he probably could have just died. Bagel hissed.

"What's going on?" Kate said, cluing in on his body language.

"This peregrine falcon has killed the most mobs in our area.. I didn't get it until now, but that's the name of the one on the leaderboard."

The women both took a step back and Bagel took this opportunity to actually go inside the store, stepping right next to the little escalator that went to a lower area.

"What's a leaderboard?" The Falcon said. "And can I eat it? No, the system is saying I can't. Interesting. It tastes delicious, though?"

"I'm sure that once we explain what it is, you're going to enjoy being the number one deck bearer in this region. But more to the point, we're actually going to go into this dungeon, so if you can run more than one today. If you're in, come with us. If you try to fight Bagel, I will end you," Kate said firmly.

Bagel felt the warmth that he felt only with drywall the other day. He could get used to this.

The Falcon grumbled.

Ashley took a moment to grab a caramel cattail candy stick. Wordlessly opened it up and nibbled on the end. By this time, the Falcon had summoned a floating mob and had perched itself on top of it.

"While we're here waiting," Kate said. "Do you mind giving us a little rundown of your deck or your powers so we know how to work around you?"

"Well, I have wind magic and it makes me faster in the flight."

"He's obviously strong enough to get through that wall easily," Bagel said.

"That's a point in his favor if we are actually going to be going through and riding a bunch of wall monsters, but I don't think that's going to happen. Let me just summarize what we have and then it sounds like you'll be fighting next to Bagel."

Kate explained how she did an area of effect damage. Ashley swarmed the enemies and kept them off of the team. Big old was their focus of heavy hitting creature type and how they many floated around in battle. Todd, to his credit, took this in stride as if it was the gospel.

The team took their time surveying the dungeon from outside and, with the eyes of their newest helper, they could definitely see that it did not go that far in and, unfortunately, they didn't see any mobs.

"If we're all ready, let's step through," Ashley said.

---

Inside the dungeon, Ashley could hear her heart beating. Everything looked about the same as it had in the real Walgreens, but this one just seemed like the bizarre world version.

Where were they?

There had been shelves of brushes and shampoo and all kinds of things. All she saw were tiny little bottles that had indescribable writing that made zero sense in any language you could think of. It was like they had ripped it up.

"Bagel, does anything smell weird in here?" Kate said from across the way.

There was a problem with using the cat to smell things. Smell works differently in Dungeons and even though he had a great sense of smell and hearing, it wasn't reliable. It was something about the judges being created by the system that had caused these issues. Outside in New York, even Ashley could smell the musk of the city that never slept. Like honestly, the city never sleeps. Probably needed a shower or a good scrub down.

Ashley could just imagine Kate taking your time scrubbing her back and how much she would love that if she had a shower that could actually fit two people, and then she blushed, realizing what she was thinking about and got back on task.

"Summon your tower turtle, the totem thingy," Ashley said.

"All right."

It took her a minute as Kate had to keep drawing cards and cycling through her but then the turtle was out and suddenly every single tiny little bottle that I once been an oddly abstract piece of art sprouted a pair of arms and legs and then turned on them.

Ashley screamed. "It's what you do when you're in a store where everything is mimic."

Instantly, she ordered her swarm forward to surround and envelop them. The force of Todd's wind blasts was palpable from the five feet away that she had moved. He was standing at one of those drifting balloon mobs and just beating on the wall. Now Ashley wasn't a road watcher but thematically. The flash across the bird's face was something that would be etched on her mind for the rest of her life, no matter what she did.

It was that this was the right Falcon for the job and that shit had just gotten heavy. But she had to focus on the one thing she could focus on. And to her credit, that one thing is that exact moment was encircling them with her swarm as just about everything there had turned out to be a mimic and then making sure that nothing got through it.

She felt personally powerless at this exchange. She had, by her estimation, about 20 different swarm tofu creatures that were doing her dirty work. And then, there were the damn confounding variables of bagel and the mob. He was riding as well as the clearance around the Falcon. For as soon as she realized the Falcon was going to be making these huge destructive attacks, she had her swarm fan out. Then, Todd battered, one of the giant shell units over and it collapsed. That was approximately 30 seconds into their fight and by then, the effect of the tower turtle had become very clear. As fast as these little mimics came into their area, he could destroy them. It just took about 30 of them defending themselves from what had to be over 50 tiny mobs the size of most times, a bottle or a can.

Kate punched a box of hair dye. It flew right past her and then smacked at the wall.

The box of red hair dye slowly slid down the wall thereafter. "Red just isn't my color. I prefer brunettes. I mean, I prefer to be blonde."

Ashley would unpack that later.

Not that she was becoming friendly with Kate. It was just that after running two dungeons with her; she was familiar with her. And familiarity bred understanding and contempt in equal measure. She could still hate the woman for destroying her chance to rap on Broadway as well as potentially become my dancer and singer in her own right? But that was all potential.

They saw another box of hair dye trying to jump on an assault cake from a top shelf. Acting on instinct, she stepped in and punched it. "Nobody attacks Kate except for me. You're not worthy of her hair dye? More like hair dead."

And that was when she realized that instead of the Box flying away against the wall like it happened with Kate, instead, the mimic had grown a pair of teeth and an entire mouth and tried to bite on to her arm. In fact, it was holding on to the skin of her hand rather than being punched and tossed away.

Ashley saw red, pulling her right hand back, still in a fist and punching it straight into the ground, pounding the mimic to within an inch of its life.

She kept punching it for what had to be over a dozen punches before it stopped struggling against her. Using her right hand to hold it down, she punched it until it burst underneath her. The mouth that happened to clothes around her knuckle was now wide open like a bear trap made of human teeth where the spikes would have been.