Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

Cats didn't sweat. They didn't have the glands. Bagel hadn't expected to have to slow down, but he did. It was his fur's fault. His winter coat had yet to finish shedding.. He was panting like a dog.

Bagel had the workers make a sign that they were going to buy and sell cards and put it outside. Soon, he got his second and third sale of the day. The rows of flowers took them a bit to clean up. Bagel didn't expect the florist to show up anytime soon.

Janet was carefully pricing each card at a little more than Bagel was willing to spend. People paid, alternatively in credits or cash to buy them. Bagel always sold them for more than he was buying them at. In short order, he bought and sold over $1,000 worth of cards with the base of each card being about $100.

His success gave him the confidence to keep the store open and keep selling things that people were selling him.

"How are these people getting all these cards again?" he asked.

Janet orbited around him. Her voice projected evenly, as if she were just sitting in one place. "Every time you kill a mob, you can get a card. There's a chance that the mob will drop a card that isn't that mob but it's rare. You should probably fight some of these mobs so you can get some experience and get a perk or two."

Bagel knew that he was going to have to learn about what perks stats were at some point in time, but he couldn't be bothered to leave his shop. Not unless there was something delicious on the other end of it waiting for him. He didn't want to change anything for himself. He just wanted to go and enjoy his life.

It just so happened that he happened to want to live his life in his shop and on his own terms.

"Hey, boss," Janet said. "I've been tracking the spawning time, and it looks like it's about thirty minutes in between respawns. We can head out in about one minute and try to acquire one."

Bagel rolled around on the counter. Was it necessary? No. But he could only get so much product using restock. He was limited.

"Might as well. Can you fight?"

"I can't fight. Your workers can. I can only travel a certain distance from the shop. If you upgrade me or you upgrade the shop, then I can go further. I am not forbidden from giving tactical knowledge though."

Bagel hopped down and sauntered to the door.

The glass door with the silver handle waited there, unmoving. Beyond it, the city smelled of human progress.

He waited for a human to open it for him. One of his workers easily pushed it slowly open.

He was not surprised to see the same homeless man sitting out there. The man looked a little bit better for wear, but he still wasn't doing well.

The stench of his unwashed body was abhorrent. Bagel thought that he might want to use a cleanse card at that moment. He didn't want to spend his energy on that.

"One minute," Janet said, circling over the spot where the pizza rat was set to show up.

The worker with full health followed Bagel to the mostly empty street.

A few people walked around, but for the most part, car traffic had stopped. It was unsettling how normal today felt.

Bagel wasn't sure if people would be doing the same thing they usually did tomorrow as they did today, but as he saw the sun dipping behind him, lights were definitely going on.

"Ten seconds," Janet said. "Hit it hard."

"Prepare to fight," Bagel said to his worker. "Do what Janet says."

The creature stepped forward, moving into the combat stance of a long suffering retail worker, who was just told that he was finally allowed to fight a customer. Satisfaction was right there in front of him.

There was a spot in the center of second avenue that looked like it had been through a lot recently. A human might say that it needed to be repaired.

The asphalt wasn't cracked. What was there was a scorched landmark that had been through some emotional damage. Perhaps it needed to be painted over, or perhaps it just needed some time off. Humans around the block were just walking around as if the best deals of their lives weren't waiting right there.

Bagel would have to work on that.

None of the deck bearers around him were paying attention as the pizza rat appeared. They were either acknowledging his superiority or were letting him take a turn. Both ways were fine.

Bagel urged his mount forward to fight it. They traded blows for a minute, and Bagel checked his hand. He had two cooks in his hand and one cleanse. With one energy devoted to the worker inside the store, one energy to go to the store didn't have spare energy.

Maybe he could use those perks that Janet had so lovingly described as important?

He would have to take a look at that later. With ten cards and him only being able to use three at once, that was a major downfall. He did understand why this system wouldn't let him use all ten cards at once.

The system needed discipline, and he would be the one to enforce that.

He needed summons that would do back breaking labor for him. Together, they would discipline the system.

Having been ready for the pizza rat to spawn, the worker finished the fight quickly.

His victory was like a toddler trying not to pet him. Inevitable. He would get his satisfaction.

Bagel got another notification. He had received experience points as well as a card.

He purred. All was moving according to plan.

The new card was the same as many of the ones he already had. It would do him no good, but with ten of those, the doorman could have his own deck. Then he could do his own leveling. Then his influence could increase.

Bagel looked down second avenue and then up. There were several deck bearers fighting.A few taxi cabs drove around, still trying to make money even after everything was going down. If the pizza rats were on a timer, then they had all gone off at the same time.

There had to be a way to slow the tide. These respawns were going to kill foot traffic and that meant no one visiting the bodega.

Bagel returned to his store, taking some time to examine his immediate surroundings.

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Across the street, the pizza shop had shut down. The bar next to it, Keats, was dark as well, also the subway restaurant. In fact, of all the shops at ground level, it looked like his was the only one that was open except for the Thai place on 45th Street.

Next to it, across the 45th street on the corner, the Korean laundry shop was still running. It had never been so quiet in Bagel's estimation as it was right now. Sure, it might be dead at the middle of the night, but it was only late afternoon and usually far more people wandered the streets.

There was nothing for him to do about it except accept what was going on and make a profit.

He walked back inside. He would probably return in half an hour to get the next pizza rat. So long as his luck held, he could use his workers to get more cards for his collection.

"I can handle shop operations if you need to take a nap, boss," Janet said.

"That will be sufficient."

"That works."

It had been a difficult day.

He was going to let it rest.

---

"I did not enjoy that," Bagel said with a long stretch as he woke from his slumber.

He gazed upon his domain. The freezers with cold ice cream. The fridges with cold drinks. The two large shelves stocked full of sugary treats that gave him nothing. The workers were still busy rearranging cans and looking spry as ever.

Looking at the two quiet workers, he was interrupted trying to figure out how to make them dance.

"I can't believe it! They're selling cards here! I've been looking for these," a male voice said.

Two people had walked into the bodega. If there was a uniform for a generic human, they were draped in it. It was like a toddler had dressed themselves in the image of what they thought an adult would wear to their job at the business factory.

The first one began speaking animatedly. "I'm so glad the shop is open. I was hoping that we could experience this."

"Yeah, you think that the systems would be altered. Oh it's so nice to experience a real New York City bodega."

"If things changed, how would people despair and fear?"

One man handed a blue ox to the other. "I saw the reports too. We all did. What good does that serve? How else would they get their news and communicate? Isn't this marvelous? All of this engineering genius to mass produce these cans?"

"Brother, we're being watched."

Bagel regarded the two humans. He composed himself, focusing on the two men. Their lack of a smell was disturbing, an anomaly. Everyone smelled, from other cats claiming ownership to that sickly scent that preceded terrible coughing fits among the humans..

"Ah. The deck bearer," the second said. A man with brown eyes glared as if through him.

Clearly these two had an agenda. That was fine. Bagel was after their money.

"Can we help you?" Bagel asked.

"Just browsing," the man with blue eyes said. "One hundred dollars for a card? What are the costs in credits?"

"Ten credits per card for Pizza Rat cards," Janet said. "We don't mix currency so it's either all credits or all cash."

The two men took a second to confer quietly. Their overall smell was unsettlingly clean. Most humans had a bit of a sweaty smell, especially in the late summertime. These two didn't.

"That is acceptable," one said, bringing out a tablet. "We will take two Pizza Rat cards as souvenirs."

Janet produced a similar tablet and the two touched. The screen was about the size of the regular cash register, but the script was in a language that a recently illiterate cat couldn't make out.

Having watched them exchange credits, Bagel watched them leave. This was probably fine.

They were simply odd. Not a cause for worry. It wasn't like those two were apex ambush predators that had expunged all smell to make stalking their prey easier...right?

"There were so many customers last night boss," Janet said, doing a little spin in the air. "We made almost two full decks. It turns out that the spawn rate of the pizza rats is lowered at night."

"Well that's... Something. Anything else happen?"

"The great system announced that there will be instance dungeons soon, but that was to be expected. It's a shame really," Janet zipped to the door and then floated menacingly. "I thought that this was going to change things."

A loud honk brought Bagel into the present moment fully. Nothing had really changed outside, except that the bus lane was now taken over with... "Is that a police barricade?"

The metal was neatly arranged around the space where the spawns continued to appear. How had he not noticed people setting up the barricades? Not only that, there was a queue of people.

"Is there a way we can stop that? It's got to be bad for business. But also that was pretty fast for the NYPD, eh?"

The humans were taking turns fighting the spawning pizza rats. Because of course they were doing that. Several orderly lines had queued up around each of them.

Bagel hadn't decided if he wanted to do so or not. He had enough with his workers taking turns overnight to slay pizza rats. At least the new floating thing could pop laser beams around.

"It's so good that you can make it here. I'm so glad to have you, and I'm sure the mission needs a man like you. That's the exact moment. Shame that we need to be working on our extraterrestrial outreach this year instead of our EU compliance problems."

"I would almost prefer another GPDR briefing over this. Almost," the man in the suit said, holding open the glass door.

Bagel had paused the light show when they had approached the door. Humans were all wrapped up in their own business. They barely saw the reality of what was in front of their face unless prompted. Then again, they didn't have his superior senses.

Both men had a gruff accent that he couldn't place. But money was money.

Bagel didn't see black or white. He only saw green as the two apparently rich men floated around his wares. So he left his prime nap spot and jumped down to the register and began grooming himself, ready to stop and make a sale at any time.

"Oh! Look Tavish! They're selling cards here!" The one with the more beautiful beard peered over the counter, ignoring Bagel. "...that is a lot of pizza rat cards."

"We wouldn't have any compliance issues... Is that weird how...okay damn that is a lot of pizza rat cards."

They had the audacity to not greet him, like he was a common housecat. Worse, they were ignoring him, as if he was part of the scenery.

His claws flexed, and he reminded himself that a proper business cat didn't scratch customers, even if they were rude, and especially not if they had money to spare.

"Pardon me, gentlemen." Bagel rose, and despite his false pleasantries, he couldn't stop the annoyed swishing of his tail. "Allow me to get out of your way."

Bagel moved to the side, his claws inappropriately extended. He supposed that they might want to ask him a question, so he turned to give them his full attention and went into sales mode.

"See anything you like?"

"Tavish?"

"Yeah, it's a cat. Uh... hello?"

Bagel flexed his tail. "I supposed that I should put up a sign, eh Janet?"

"That would be a good idea." The drone circled above them, doing its best impression of a muted discoball.

"We have pizza rat cards because that's what drops outside," Bagel said. He tapped a paw. "This is probably going to be the only store open on this block for a while."

"I see," Tavish said. "Uh in that case... How many Euros for a pizza rat?"

"Janet?"

"Calculating..."

They all waited there for a tense six seconds while Janet made incoherent beeping noises.

"Is your... drone slower than a calculator?" Tavish said. "I see one card for $100, but..."

"One hundred and twenty Euros," Janet said with the finality of a starbucks worker forced to work a closing shift right before an opening shift.

"Shoot. Well I guess I can afford that. One for the collection. Shame that there isn't much variety," he said. "Though I supposed you have to work with what people sell to you. I don't know that I would want to sell any of mine."

"Well we will pay more for different cards, if you find any," Bagel said. "Always looking for new product."

Tavish pulled out his money, added a blue ox and then saw the grill.

"Shoot is your grill running? I'm a bit peckish."

Bagel smiled and then drew his hand. He dismissed a worker and then summoned a cook. "It is now."