Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

They had done it. The new cat was able to speak and understand written words. It could and see. With smell it could distinguish them all.

It could even use its magical card powers to summon pizza rats. She was, after all, a deck bearer.

There was one glaring problem.

"Meatball?" Copernicus said. "You're sure?"

It was not Bagel's favorite name, but if the cat was going to choose its own name then they might as well let that happen. But then again, what was tradition? The name on the side of the cat carrier said meatball with a little icon of a cat. So there was a precedent.

Had there not been a precedent maybe they would have told Meatball to pick her own name. It was, however, the first time on history that a cat had been given the option. Cats did not abide by peer pressure or traditions, which were peer pressure from dead people.

"I'm absolutely certain that I want to be called meatball. Yes. It's what my humans called me before. I want to honor their choice."

"You don't have to stick to the name that the humans picked for you," Bagel said, trying to play the cats advocate.

Meatball took a second to ponder it before accepting. Her nod was a foregone conclusion.

It was one of those things that Bagel had never considered for himself, he was always Bagel, and he was always going to be Bagel. Why would he ever change that?

Nothing that he had ever thought about it and left him to believe that he could have another option.But now that there was another option in front of him he realized that he could actually do that

He didn't actually want to change his name. He just liked that he could. It felt right to be Bagel though.

That was probably the same thought was going through Meatballs mind as she made her decision. They had asked him to do this and he had agreed. He just hadn't known any cats.

Jelly side layer was something else. He didn't feel unwelcome or unwanted but it was an entirely new feeling being with a group of cats.

He rather liked it.

It was interesting how quickly he went from being part of the out group to one of the in group. At least in his mind, he was inside.

With their help, he could focus on things that were larger in scope than his neighbor hood. To him that meant meeting with others of his kind. To others it might have meant something else but clearly, they were willing to get new members, through whatever means necessary.

"So what now?" Meatball said.

"Whatever you want now," Copernicus said.

Of all of the cats he looked the eldest. That meant something, right? Humans deferred to their elders. But no they had all been awakened the same length of time so...

"I don't even know my options," Meatball said. "But I would love to hear more about... everything."

So they told her. For about twenty minutes the cats all talked about their cards and what they were doing. Copernicus had received cards related to library science and had linked his mantle to the very building that they were occupying.

"You can come work at the adventurers guild. Its steady work, clearing dungeons. We can change your cards around. You will level up," Bagel said.

"Will any of you come with me?" Meatball said.

There was a lot of cats looking away all of a sudden. Bagel decided that it was none of his business and he was not even going to start getting interested. If people wanted to come back with him then that would have been fine but here he was in charge of his Bodega and he damn sure was going to make a profit.

Bagel decided to look at the problem head on. The poor cat was lost but so was he when he was first awakened.

"You are welcome to travel back to midtown east with me. You can start running dungeons with some of the people from the adventurers guild I have food and room until you figure out what you're doing," Bagel said. "You are welcome to take another offer."

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Bagels pretty sure that I wouldn't be a forthcoming offer. This was fun. All he wanted to do was get back to his people because he didn't think that this would be going on for long.

"Bagel, we appreciate you coming all this way. We will be in touch."

---

The habitats and look normal enough. It was one of those that was stuck on the list of jobs available for The Avengers Guild. The way that it work now is that the NYPD would figure out what the Dun and a potential reward. Usually the reward was 50 credits because that's how much the NYPD could afford. Ashley didn't like placing it that low. Not that she had student loans to pay anymore or any other prospects. It had taken her comic book shop 11 days to finally shut down.

Now she had the guild and Kate.

Her landlord still wanted her to pay rent, so she had bought her building from the system. It was no will against it and no way for a landlord to even fix this.

A man outside blowed gold as a cardskill lit him up. He then punched a pizza rat. Dozens of people having killed the rats had taken the time to draw a circle around where the rats spawned using paint. The paint didn't always last because some people used skills to destroy the rats or burn them or hose them, but the crater was usually there. As she looks down 2nd avenue, there were fewer pizza rats than on day one. Bagels campaign to buy up the streets and the block had helped to whittle down the areas where the pizza rats could spawn and when he bought a place where pizza rack could swan the spawn didn't go someplace else. Effectively. They were decreasing the amount of cars available as they were increasing the amount of safe spaces.

Big old drawing of the neighborhood and the current safe space. And even though it was just a quarter of one block, the area in blue that the math displayed was enough to house a thousand people. That is, of course, assuming that the buildings encode enforcement guy didn't yell at them for creating a floating apartment above them.

Some of the buildings behind them had a lot of negative space about them. Due to the fact that they were one-story buildings, the Chinese food restaurant and the park and garage next to it, just kind of had nothing about them. And since Bagel had bought the land underneath them, they had just decided to use card skills including hers to build it up using salvage resources.

Her day when she realized that she was doing a lot of salvage work, redirecting chunks of old buildings that have been smashed and cars. It had been pulverized and turning them into usable bricks for the building that they were making. It wasn't that she had a cards kill necessarily. It was her salvage skill was helping her turn something that would otherwise been useless. That December was going to be very useful. For instance, all of the cars that had been left parked on forty fifth street were now flooring. The cars that had been left in the parking garage had all now been converted into support beams.

Ashley's Palm met her face and she could only sigh in indignation. The man was flailing about as the pizza rat snapped at him. Why did he not just take it out? He was clearly a deck bearer.

And then without warning, the man upper cutted the pizza rat and it went flying up into the air. That had to have been a specific skill. He probably had a card called punch or pugilist or something like that that turned him into a boxer. It made sense that there were cards that imbued people with abilities. That he would get so up front and personal with it was his problem.

Ashley just really appreciated the distance between herself and her targets when she used summons. Mobs would attack summons first in in all cases and that was good enough for her. That is until she got a sniper rifle mob and she could be way in the back.

She found herself mindless going back in the deck builder website. It was familiar. It was the most human thing about the apocalypse, the need to make a wiki to understand something.

There was a daily counter on top of it on the top of it that showed that only ten new cards had been added to the collection that day.

There was a lot of talk in the forum there about how the base cards had been all discovered and that for the most part the next thing was seeing what dungeon would produce as many of the dungeons were producing unique or special cars that could not be found outside of them.

But even as a ratio, there was only five dozen cards that it come from dungeons. The four hundred remaining been found out in wild. The gentrifier crab they found was not that unique; it was just rare. The highest tier cards were all found in the dungeon.

The thing they was unique was its color and the fact that if many of the dungeons had different flavored versions of the same card. The typing might be different as well.

The amount of specificity of the dungeons showed just how few types there were.

Kate sidled up next to her. "Do you think they finally figured out the typing yet? I was always thinking that the electric would beat water but having water beat rock also made sense in it in a way? But then only some water creatures beat Rock. Some are weak to fire instead of lightning."

Ashley shrugged. "Everyone is saying to that is what the ice type is. But it doesn't sound like there's really going to be any real difference between everything, especially if this is what we see and we can only tell what the weaknesses are."

It was a crude image of what people thought was typing short though it branched multiple places because many summons we're different types and then not every summons of the same type had the same weakness.

"I think that those birds are going to be able to figure it out sooner or later. I'm just worried about you. You've been working the counter for a while and you looked a little peeved when the pizza rats respond. Is everything all right?"

"My landlady isn't answering her phone."

"Ah yeah. They do do that don't they. You think she's all right?"

She did not want to voice an opinion but her face was definitely giving something away. Kate picked up on it immediately.

"Do you think that she 's gone? I know you talked a couple days ago but..."

Ashley stiffened. "If you told me two weeks ago that I would have to be looking for my landlord so that I could ascertain if she was dead or alive I would have called you crazy but here we are now and guys just asked Bagel to sniff around shouldn't I."

"Fuck man. Do you need help to see if your landlady is alive?" Kate was clearly willing to help. Ashley grabbed her hand.