Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

By the time Ashley got out of her rage state, the battle was over and all the tiny mimics, of which there were hundreds, had all died, leaving them with well over 100 mimic cards. The cards themselves were not that great, but that there were so many of them meant they could leave out of here and directly make a new deck bearers with all mimic powers, especially since all these decks they had put together were now without an anchor piece or a mantle.

Her mantle card had come in so handy. Without it, she would only have what four mimics to use. She absorbed the biomass of two of the mimics, making sure that she was going to reproduce it and turn the biomass of two more into recent additions to her swarm.

"It's interesting how you do that. You're making your own copies of it?"

"They are slightly worse than the original, but that's a problem for me. Never because there's just so many of them. You didn't do so bad yourself."

Bagel flicked his tail back and forth. I'm like how she felt about Kate. Ashley was clear about what she felt for him. She had grown fond of the cat before he could speak and now that he could speak and had a mouth about him; she loved him even more.

"It seems like that's everything there is here," Bagel said. "That's all I can hear, at least. Todd. Can you hear anything else?"

The bird was taking his time sorting through all the cards. Besides all the ninety-five mimic cards, they found five support cards that were not direct creatures, adhering to the ridiculous drop rate that they'd all gotten used to.

"That's a lot of useless cards," the Falcon said, stretching his wings. "As well. It's rough being indoors, I was hoping that..."

Ashley examined the Falcon. He looked pristine. "What we've been seeing is that about five percent of the drops are not mobs, or specifically not the mob that you just killed."

Janet, who had mostly been quiet through the fight, chirped. "This is within normal parameters. I can explain the standard distribution."

It wasn't a question, and Ashley wasn't going to treat it as one. He had her AI robot under control.

Her AI played the part wonderfully and kept it under control. Where it sounded like Janet was doing more and more freelancing, moving away from Bagel's intent day by day. She didn't know how the interaction was between the cat and his AI. She could only guess that things were about as good as they seemed.

But her AI listens to her and only talks back to people on her command. Janet clearly had no issues with that, but then again, it seemed like the AI took on some of the personality of its owner.

She wondered if she could do some sort of comparative analysis of the two AIS and how they deferred, but then she realized she had been sitting there for way too long and they needed to get it to move on. With five cards that were not mimics, they had the rough job of having to tell Todd that he could only have one of the five. There were in fact four people that had gone to that dungeon if cats and falcons counted as people. This meant that the Falcon was trying to get two of the utility cards.

They went back and forth for a few minutes and each person would get 25 cards or the equivalent value at the Bagel's store. The mimic card itself had not been seen before and with the potential to get two new people to become full deck bearers just off of their winnings from this dungeon; things were looking up.

Life wasn't perfect no, but it felt like she was going to get a better sense of the path forward.

"Look what's going on here," Kate said. "The city has a vested interest in what's going on and they are trying to do the best they can. The guys at precinct seventeen are just trying to do the street level policing that Mayor Abrams is trying to put in to keep us all safe.."

Kate held up a shot glass after they did their dungeon run with the Falcon. The falcon had joined them for another one and even though he didn't stop making jokes about eating the cat and Bagel made jokes about eating him.

"Well, now that most of the dungeons that popped up before in our neighborhood are cleared, we can finally just take care of them as they appear. Let the police take care of the ones that are further out."

Ashley had invited Kate and Bagel up to her apartment. It was an easy win for Bagel as he'd never been there and it was right next to his place and he was avoiding the thing that he knew had to be done, but he couldn't ask anyone else to do.

"I would never have thought to open up all these things together. Make an app about what the dungeons are and have people call them in. And then have people run them if they can, but I'm just a simple, handsome cat."

"Yeah, not to be rude, but how are you able to speak with us? Like I understand, the system gave you some knowledge, but what did it do to you?"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Bagel purred.

It wasn't like he could explain what the system was trying to do to him.

"How would I even know?" Bagel said. "It just said suddenly it was giving me this thing called literacy and then all the sudden I had all these ideas inside of my head and that I could recall people talking about them actually meaning something. I tell you what, cats don't talk a lot. We might say a lot, but we don't talk."

Ashley clinked the ice in her whiskey glass. "Not that it matters anymore, but I guess this effectively kills the weekend. If we're going to be expected to clear dungeons all the time when we're off duty, it's like a second job."

Kate smiled, patting Bagel on the head.

Though he had sat in Kate's lap before this time. It felt nice and as she was relaxing on Ashley's small but powerful couch; the effect compounded their relaxation.

"So now that we've figured out a way to stop all these dungeons from popping up here. What's next?" Kate stopped petting him for a second, and the indignity of it was almost too much for him to bear. She quickly started up again when he wrapped her lightly on the arm with his tail.

Ashley finished her drink. "I guess Broadway's not going to be opening up soon. So how is this girl supposed to make a living?"

Maybe it was the fact that they'd run four dungeons now together or maybe it was the fact that something had remained painfully unsaid of the past between the two women, but it felt like they'd settled. If not comfortable, the two women were very focused on their joint goal.

"I could use some help in the shop, I guess?" Bagel said. He wondered if he could actually use that help. The amount of police officers that have brought in some cards to trade in for others was causing him to steadily reorganize what he thought his store needed versus what it was going to have to have. Already, he could sense Janet, trying to tug him back to the store to make some sort of management decision. That could wait.

He was a handsome boy and handsome boys got to choose what they were doing. Especially when they work so hard to get mobs in place. Without the mobs? He was going to have to figure out a way to pay a human to be there. With the mobs. It just took a bit of his magical power. And the store in Janet. He just had to tuck away that part of him, allowing it to just be.

"You could just be the natural marketplace. That's the thing you could just do. No one's going to stop you. I mean, what you… you own the building, right?" Kate said. The girls looked up at Janet.

"All the proper paperwork has been filed, and the city recognizes Bagel is the owner of that business and building. And perhaps more importantly, the system also recognizes said claim."

A look of mild interest crossed Ashley's face.

Bagel was hoping that things would go to where he might watch something on television. He still felt awkward asking.

The whole space inside of the apartment felt just so different from the bodega. There one could have everything out for display to sell to sell anybody.

Who didn't have a litter box? It was ridiculous. But it was okay cuz he peed outside when they got in, like a gentleman

"Is that what you're going to keep doing? Bagel? You get in the marketplace like a good boy?" Kate's finger is on the back of his neck to enjoy tender magical sausages. He never felt so good about something that wasn't eating.

"What else can I do?" Bagel said, as if there were any other options.

"I-I guess that's right. Until things cool down, what are the choices you have? I'm sure that in time this will get under control and things will go back to either weird or normal than we have right now.

"Things are normally weird here, but they could definitely stand to be weirder." The firm pressure on his neck and back was just what he needed, and he found himself at peace. Whatever the heck she had done to her fingers where there was her card power or something else. He just felt so comfortable and he drifted off to sleep.

"Wow, he's really into that," Kate said.

"He just fell asleep in my lap. This is like when you have a child and they're really young and they get really comfortable and then they fall asleep on you. You're not treating him like a grown man, are you?"

"No, I just I mean to the person, right? Like what is? What is a person if they can't decide for themselves and choose their own path and work a dead-end job in midtown? Trying to make it big..."

She stared off, hypnotized by Kate's lips. They look so juicy and kissable, and she shook her head out of that. She would not kiss the girl that had stolen her dreams where they realized or unrealized right before the apocalypse. It would just be so terribly nice to do so.

Kate looked pensive as she stopped massaging Bagels back. "Look, I understand that things have been weird and like I can't go back and give you the audition. And I know you're going to say that I slept with the director or something, but I really didn't. And you know this guy. This got me thinking here. Do you think he's ever slept somewhere? That isn't the bodega."

She thought about it for a little. The cat was invariably going to wake up some place new because neither one of them wanted to get up and she found herself looking at Kate's hands and wondering how they would feel against hers and how nice that would be. She felt alive. Going through dungeons with this girl made her feel like there was no guaranteed tomorrow. People had died already.

They passed by several ambulances which had to be transporting deck bearers to the hospital or something on their way back from the last dungeon. Like the city was going to take care of the mobs until he doubles and now that their neighborhood had their dungeon problem under control, they were going to probably ask Kate to be driven around to identify where other dungeons are or they would have to link up with their power. Somehow. It was a mess.

"If didn't have that power to detect dungeons, we would start being overflow or what is that? We'd have a wave of monsters leaving the dungeons in time? I don't want that. So I guess. Thank you and I know like I'm so mad at you about the audition thing. It would have just been nice to know that I could have been a part or something or I had a chance."

Kate gives her a wry, sardonic grin. "Do you still have the 16 bars memorized? Because I have heard no rap in like 3 days and I'm kind of itching to hear something."

It was all Ashley. Could do to not gasp. After all, they've been through the hours and ask the girl to rap again. She had missed her vocal practice for the past 2 days, but she's been busy with things and it wasn't every day that you started running dungeons with your enemy.

"Can you can you beatbox the beat for me?"

"With pleasure. Let me show you what this tongue does."

In Ashley wasn't blushing before, she was definitely showing now.

But the girl next to her lay out a sick beat using just her mouth and tongue and Ashley wondered if she'd ever done the things that were now passing through her mind at top speed. That was a question for a later day.

"I said they asked me to boom bap…"