Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

Janet had gone at length about his many options. She has shown him pictures made up of what it would look like for him. She had gotten people on board.

"I'm not wearing a top hat," he said. "That is final."

"Not even a little cute one?" Khaleesi said.

"No, not even that. I don't care what meatball says. Her choices are her own."

In the back corner, meatball was expecting herself in a closed circus television camera set up. She was wearing both a top hat and a bow tie. The former black, the ladder being purple.

"I just wish that this gave me some bonus to my stats or something," Meatball yelled from the back.

"I'm happy that you're happy, but I think that I'm going to pass on this wonderful opportunity." Bagel returned his gaze to Khaleesi.

She wasn't pouting but he knew that she was not happy about this and more than likely there was nothing he do to change that short of wearing whatever silly outfits that she wanted him to wear.

"But please, Boss?" She was putting on what was officially known by humans as puppy dog eyes. Kittens would definitely not put up with that shit. Only a dog or a human could love a face like that.

"I feel like there's absolutely no way for me to explain this in a way that will be satisfactory to you. So let me be clear. If it doesn't give me an insane stat boost then I am not going to be getting that. Is that understood?"

She slumped slightly. "Oh well, at least there's Meatball."

"There is always meatball, the most beautiful cat on the block," Meatball said from the back.

She was just past the grill where two cooks were serving up food and the three people waiting for it were snickering. Bagel couldn't tell if they was laughing at the conversation or the situation that even put in or they could possibly be laughing. It was just Meatball doing her own fashion show. The closed circuit television was right next to the grill so there wasn't much room for her to do a fashion show without bumping into one of them.

There just wasn't much room in the Bodega for anything in this economy.

Bagel thought about what life had been like before Meatball and Khaleesi. It had not been that much different but it had been a little bit less quiet.

Or was it more quiet?

Bagel reached back to his system granted knowledge. The term he was looking for was quiet.

There was also a little nudge in the back of his head that people didn't want to use that word when it was actually quiet because of the application, but it didn't go on as to what the application actually meant and that gave him pause.

Culture was one of those things that the system didn't quite get.

Thinking about it was just an exercise and futility. Humans were human after all and there was nothing he could do about it. He would accept it if he had to.

"Did you get the thing that you wanted from whoever you were messaging in the city?"

Khaleesi brightened up for the first time since he had turned her down repeatedly. "The plans? Oh my God. They're going to basically give us whatever we want. Did I tell you? The guy I talked to actually was in the air national guard and he knew all about this stuff and he said he was going to dig up some secret information from a battle lightning web forum or something."

"So the thing you have been going on and on about? They're going to get it for you?"

"Well you try getting top secret plans for unmanned aerial vehicles. I had to offer up Raul on a silver platter to him."

There was, of course, no there rebuttal to her claims. Not that there was for him to do. They just wanted him to level them up and put him to use.

"Did you try to sell your brother to a city official for just some sort of document you needed?" Meatball yelled from the back.

"They wouldn't take him!" Khaleesi yelled back.

"No one wanted to buy Bagel either," Meatball said. "I feel your pain."

"HEY!" Bagel yelled. "I am rent by the hour cat, not for sale!"

"Sorry boss," Meatball said.

Bagel would, of course. Forgive her just this once. He was a magnanimous cat, if nothing else. "Don't let it happen again. If if it does happen, at least get a good deal this time."

"Yes boss!" She was far too excited at that.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"It's hard to find good help nowadays," Bagel said. "You almost have to make it yourself. Your parents had the right idea in having you and your brother."

"And to think that I brought Bak Lava out here for you to experience," Khaleesi said.

"Perhaps I was too hasty. In my defense, I couldn't smell it on you." Bagel gave her the better eyes, the ones that made puppy dog eyes look amateurish.

True handsome boys didn't need to worry about if their bids would be taken the correct way. She melted and in that moment, he knew that he could do no wrong.

"Alright how about three pictures with the hat on?"

"One?"

"Bak lava."

"Very well."

---

The guild was quiet for once. It seemed like everyone that wanted to be on a job was now out doing a job. That left time for Ashley to ruminate on what their next steps were. Not just her next steps but the guilds next steps. Because God forbid she ever take a break.

"The area that we have in the safe zone covers half the block now," Ashley said. "Add on my building and the roads... We are almost to the point where we need to deliberately walk to get mobs."

"Not there yet, but close." Kate agreed, but she clearly wasn't satisfied.

Ashley was not satisfied, but she was the face. She had to pretend. They all had to pretend in the face of the system.

"It's not enough, but it's sufficient for us to move into the next phase of planning. And figure out which direction that the guild is going to start moving in."

"You really took a number there nominating yourself as president and doing all this extra work didn't you?"

"I'm kind of getting a sense that I should have thought about this, maybe once or twice but yeah I get it," Ashley said. "Hey has uh... jellyside layer contacted you?"

Kate froze. Ashley exhaled.

The long pause between them began to extend into the half minute territory.

"No, but they obviously contacted you," Kate said. "I don't know if I trust them."

"They can't be that bad. Bagel is a part of them."

"Bagel is a member. That doesn't mean that he is part of their leadership."

"I think they're only using him for his abilities. It makes no sense otherwise besides that he is a cat..."

That they had gone about treating a cat like any other person was just a sign of the times. It was normal and accepted. Had this happened anytime before the system apocalypse, they would not have accepted this and they would have had issues even discussing the possibility outside of a hypothetical.

But in this economy, one couldn't turn down help of any kind.

"Can you imagine us talking about cats like this before? Like what do we even think that jelly-side layer is going to do. They want to be safe just the same way that we do," Ashley said.

"Everyone is trying to come out of this on top. It's like capitalism got a reset all of a sudden and we're all trying to become the oligarchs that we all know we can be. I wonder how those billionaires are doing on their palatial estates. They would have been the first ones to go."

"I can't imagine that their staff would have stuck around. I'm still amazed that the cities got any sort of anything right now. I would have thought that the city would have immediately folded. Wouldn't you?"

Kate folded her arms. "Maybe the cops just really wanted to prove themselves?"

Below a Police officer looked like he was on his last cup of coffee for his entire career as he perused the various quests that the guild was giving out. It wasn't unusual for a police officer in uniform to look at the quests as it was something that helped him decide where to put their efforts into. If the people of the guilds were going to be going for quests then the NYPD did not have to take care of those quests.

However, on the other hand, if they did not get those quests because they were up for there for too long, then that meant that NYPD had to deal with something. When the guild itself couldn't muster the strength they needed to pass it on to somebody who would.

By the look of it, he was the one that was going to be picking up the slack. This in itself didn't seem to be a problem, but the bags under his eyes were telling a different story. Like a husband who had been tricked into going into a shopping mall in the '90s, those bags were carrying too much.

"It was good that he is there but damn if he didn't look like he is having his soul forcibly ripped from him," Kate said.

"That's one way to put it. You know that they can't live in the precinct that they work in, right? So this poor guy has to clock out and then go home to a different precinct. Where as the two of us just live across the street. If I had to do that shit I would be fucked."

"They can't live where they fucking work. What the fuck kind of rule is that?"

It was definitely one of those New York City things that you didn't learn unless you were a native or you for some reason decided you want to be a be a cop. The fact that the poor guy was going to have to go back home and then repeat all this shit the next day add nausea probably meant that he wasn't any days off anymore.

To be fair, no one was getting days off. Once comic book shop closed down, all Ashley and Kate really had to do was Ray dungeons and work guilt problems. It was like the system had decided that you couldn't have idle time and if you did it had to be in service of working against the system or leveling up or trading cards or getting food.

"I hope they fucking change that. That's absurd."

"I know right? So how everything going with the super secret project?"

It was nice she could do much without all that extra scrap but Ashley had been noting away. With no cars parked on 45th Street, she just set up shop there on the sidewalk. After all who was going to make her move her shut.

The NYPD had other issues and when they saw that she was creating something and once they explained it to the NYPD, they had no problem with it. In fact, they had ordered more of the same. The forge had been chugging away for six hours.

Hopefully with in another two or three, they would hace the controller and drone ready to go. But she didn't want to be too ambitious.

She held up a sleek futuristic looking tablet of an indeterminate design. Silver bevels and a black face were the only things that indicated what it was.

She passed it over to Kate for inspection. More than anything, it looked like an iPad if it had been made by a an alien who was also the lowest bidder on the contracts. Yeah it got the job done, it would do everything right and it was probably not going to break if you dropped in. But damn was it the base model.

"I mean it looks fine. Does it come with a carrier? Like a phone case?"

Kate to hold out and look like she was playing video games she had in her head. The forge either worked off with plans or off of a set of predetermined items that had been preselected. One of those items was a universal controller and when she figured out that that was something that she used, that was the first thing that actually had put into it.

There was no point in having a drone that couldn't be piloted and if they were going to pilot it, they were going to need a way to get audio and perhaps video recordings.

"And what's this tiny helmet with goggles about? You're not thinking...?"