Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

"So what you're saying is that this will pop up and the Foreghost will know what to do?" Bagel said.

"We've got enough material to cross the street yeah," Khaleesi said, standing next to the large cylinder. "Concrete lizards are super strong. They can just pull it across. Want to see a demonstration?"

"I don't need a demonstration."

Khaleesi already had her deck out. "I'm going to show you a demonstration."

"I said..."

Two concrete lizards dropped into the street ahead of her and immediately unfurled the spool of fencing. It looked like a roll of paper towel being pulled out except the paper was three feet tall and like a dark grey cloth.

It tensed and solidified as they dragged it across second avenue. Janet zoomed along it, scanning it with her lasers.

"And this is how we're going to reclaim our block?" Bagel said.

The fence was now all the way across. No longer soft, the material looked solid.

"If we only take it out for dungeon surges yeah, but we can start just claiming safe zones with your powers. Heck the street is a lot of room that we just... gave to cars."

"And you've got a roll on every street crossing... around what we've already bought?"

Khaleesi nodded.

"They I just need to buy up all of the streets... Janet go ahead and see what the streets would cost."

The artificial intelligence stopped her study of the wall, retracting her laser scan.

"Four thousand credits boss. We could do it," she said.

"Make it so," Bagel said. "Wasn't it supposed to be spawn time soon?"

"We had two minutes until the next scheduled spawn, boss."

Khaleesi checked her watch. Bagel chuckled. He was ready for things to change a lot.

"Traffic is going to have to change if we do what Khaleesi is suggesting," Janet said. "Though it will be excellent if we have the surge that we are expecting later today."

It had been nearly two months since the last monster surge and Bagel was itching. He didn't know if or when a surge would happen, but he knew that the more that they could do about it to head it off, the happier he would be.

He was going to make a boatload of money on the next one if they gave a good reward.

"If there's another surge I'll be halfway to owning the block."

Khaleesi paused, inspecting the concrete fence. She tapped it several times. She leaned on it, pressing it with both arms.

"I think that I miss school. This is amazing but... I kinda wonder what life would have been like. Now I'm here planning for a monster surge with the owner of the Bodega Raul works at."

She had been quiet but he heard every word. The pain was evident on her face. She wanted things to be normal.

"I can't give you what you could have had. We can keep you safe."

"Safe? Bagel I can barely leave the block. Mom is terrified of me going anywhere and if I wasn't with you, Raul wouldn't let me roam around half as much. Not that I'm mad at you." She sniffled.

Bagel padded over to her, the warm asphalt a reminder that he was outside. None of his tricks would work if she didn't at least look at him. He tried kitten eyes on her and... she wasn't paying attention. Rather than continuing to talk, he just listened to her.

She was right of course.

Even Janet didn't like him leaving to go too far. He was too valuable but her?

He was valuable because of what he could do, but Rauls family wanted to protect her for a different reason. It was one of those slow moving feelings he had gotten a few times. They wanted her because of who she was, not what she could do and... he hadn't really examined that. Was he wrong about her?

Or was it Liza and Paolo?

Something had to give.

They just sat there for a while.

There was nothing he wanted more in that moment than to not feel the way he felt.

He could feel her compose herself. She stood up, holding Khaleesi walked down the wall.

"I will not lose," Khaleesi said. "This wall will hold."

"We will not lose," Bagel said. "We can't. The whole neighborhood is relying on us."

They moved to the next crosswalk. This time, she moved it by rote. There was a practiced ease to how she used her card summons. Bagel hadn't noticed it before much but her building looked like a work of art, like a better version of his cat house. He couldn't wait to install a good fluffy rug.

"There's no doubt that you did a great job here. They would have to swarm over the fence to get anywhere. I don't think that pizza rats can jump that."

He wanted to summon some pizza rats to test it out but he was low on energy so he didn't take the time. Janet would figure it out for him later when he asked.

It wasn't even that tall. It was all then she was, but he felt like he could jump it.

He was not old when he found out he could jump really high. The way that it connected on either side of the crosswalk meant that there was a little bit of space where the humans could put a doorway or a gate and just defend that as a choke point if they wanted to.

It was evident that she could extend it further.

She left an opening, clearly designed to be a choke point on each corner. And even though the crosswalk fence could touch the buildings on the far side, those were not safe. Well at least two of them were at safe even though they were tempting to buy.

Without the money to buy them? He wasn't going to buy the pizza shop on the one corner or the multiple use high rise on the corner diagonally away from them.

Bagel leapt down and felt at the fence. "I feel safer now. I know that more fences would make you feel safer, but really the only thing that's going to make us feel safe is if we get this entire neighborhood secure."

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

He ran between her legs. She swung him up to her shoulders and he accepted it. It required him to roll lamp but this way he didn't have to use a mount and that was always a plus.

---

"Surge there's a surge!" The cacophony of voices were yelling.

"Dungeon surge!" Khaleesi yelled.

It was, of course right on time.

The last time this had happened, they were not prepared.

This time Ashley had a straight line to the police department and an adventurers guild that was stocked with hungry deck bearers. The adventures guild was far more put together and adventurous.

Additionally, they had a text chain that let half of the neighborhood be woken up. If there was a surge. They'd expected it. They had prepared.

They had relief on Kate's power. They had counted the days.

Now they had a way to actually deal with it and Ashley was finally getting to a point where she felt good about this. She sent out several text messages to the group chat and made her way to the front of the adventurous guild.

The police officer on duty at the little stand was already radioing people. Behind that thick panel glass, she couldn't understand what he was saying but he did look like he was actually doing something this time.

She nodded.

Last time they had tried to take down dungeons by themselves, causing several deaths on their side. This time? They would be calling out the dungeons and taking them with tested teams.

Then she was at the northern barrier. It felt far more solid than it had a right to be. Khaleesi had done good work.

The avenue was a safe zone for them to direct dungeon crawlers. Looking down 2nd avenue and up the way that traffic used to flow, she could see several dungeon apertures popping up. There would be many more instance dungeons and they would have to clear them all now methodically.

She moved back to the giant police control center.

Ashley knocked on the door to the the police officer's box and he opened it briefly and handed her a bullhorn. They knew.

She wasn't gleeful about using a bullhorn again to rally. The people that for some reason wouldn't answer their text messages but she now was an old hat in it.

Attention humans and deck bearers of turtle Bay neighborhood. It has come to our attention that there is now a dungeon surge in effect. So if you are not a deck bearer, please hunker down. If you are a deck bearer we need you to come out here and help us. If you want to volunteer to help, come on down to the adventurous guild on 2nd avenue.

She repeated the message several times at each of the corners between 45th and 44th Street. Then she walked around the block, this time with Ashley and tow as dozens of people hustled around. Just trying to take care of mobs and foreign parties to go into dungeons.

Twenty minutes later, her voice was forced and she returned the bullhorn to the police officer on duty. Would there having been a

Dungeon surge they had done what humans normally do and try to plan out a response to it. It was part anxiety part project management that drove the adventurers guild to realize that they needed a plan. Not only that they needed to drill the plan. So everyday, they ask various teams to show up and draw the plan and all they had to do was give them food to do it and so many people were happy to drill the plan. In fact, if there hadn't been a dungeon surge, Ashley was going to go work on the plan that day.

They called it a drill but really they just took whoever was available and just had them post up at a spot where they expected addition to come up. With many dungeons spawning in open locations and open air rather than buildings, it was only the ones that they needed Kate to find that she was working on.

Ashley arrived back at the adventures. Guild to see Khaleesi organizing a response.

Sure enough, the Brazilian girl was deep in her notes directing people to places that were being filled out on the map by runners.

"Have you seen Kate yet?"

"So he's sending her mobs back and I've sent a couple of mobs to her based off of where her stuff is. Do you need me to send a message?"

"No it's not that it's you just had a message. Just where is she?"

Khaleesi looked at the large map behind them, walked over and then pointed to a spot around forty second Street.

"This is the last spot. She just sent a mob from about five minutes ago. I think she's between first and second avenue if she's doing the great search the way that we normally do it."

If that was true, then Kate had missed her but she probably would have heard the bullhorn. Basically everybody would have heard it, but the city without all the traffic was kind of quiet. Ashley Wade had to see her girlfriend versus staying here to do incident command. That was what the police called it. Incident command. I actually needed to focus on the problem in front of her or not. Try to make sure her girlfriend was safe because Kate would absolutely bury her if she got distracted during another avenger search. Kate and Ashley were heavy hitters that needed to be deployed to only the hardest dungeons around.

---

And so it was that the runners were able to identify several problem dungeons that would not be able to be cleared.

All right. So what do we have, Liza l said to Paulo it looks like there is a forest fuge dungeon that needs your attention or a a football theme dungeon.

Bagel kept a careful neutral face.

Khaleesi had already joined up with a team taking the time to become a construction. DPS. True. She had also set up temporary barriers but that was just a part of the emergency action plan. The fact that it was something she had picked herself on her own meant that they had dragons painted on them.

I don't want to do another Forest one after the last dungeon surge, Bagel said, shuddering.

"That is entirely understandable. You want to kick that one to the 17th precinct?" Liza said, leaning in.

"All that matters to me is that we actually finish the dungeons. So if bagel still has PTSD from that we can easily avoid it." Ashley had her hand right in that spot and made everything feel better. Bagel was loathe to have her change that.

Just tell me where you need me to be and I'm there with you,"Kate said, eating furiously.

Her voice was reassuring but he knew that she even though she was a little bit further a field from the Carnage. Also, last time she had been super hungry so this time he knew she was not good that happened. That had to be her third cheese steak in a row.

Bagel knew better then comment on what Kate was eating.

"You guys are adorable but you need to pick a dungeon. How about this clown dungeon?" Liza crossed her arms.

Bagel felts Ashley lab movie. It wasn't a big movement but it was there falling in a flash.

"I think not the clown one," Bagel said. "That sounds too silly for us. Wasn't there a candy themed one?"

"There is a candy cane one, but I don't think..."

"We'll take it," Ashley and Bagel said at the same time.

"Jinx," Kate said.

Ashley leered at Kate but they began preparations immediately.

"What I wouldn't give for precedented times," Ashley said.

Bagel was not ready for this. Mentally physically perhaps he could have been. But he had gotten a little bit comfortable in doing dungeon runs. What he really wanted to do was have the humans do this for him and they had done a great job organizing themselves into such a way that he really only knew to do his special thing which is restocked it with food to keep them going.

The problem was that he was still on the cusp of level 25. And that was one who was going to get a perk and he desperately wanted the perk that would help him out with his shop or Janet. Sure, he could grind away against Omega rats or even the sometime of spawning Pizza rats but he was not feeling it. However, he and it was duty. If there's any question about it, first they had to give rid of all their dungeons then the adventurous guild would send people farther out.

It was when their base was secured that they could really move.

Yeah. The thing about living in an urban environment is that it didn't take much to block off the street. But to block off an entire block that meant dealing with so many spots that a mob could slip through.

Between her deck which featured her fore ghost and her concrete lizards, the temporary structure was up. Indeed, for a car to and on the north side of 45th Street and then jump again on the south side of 44th Street where the block protection ended. Which is to say that they would not be able to do it. The road was temporarily blocked.

The similarities to every other zombie movie that had ever played on the television in the bodega was not lost on it. And if he has the chance, he would have installed a secondary system of fences to weed out actual people from doing it. They just had to deal with flying mobs.

Thankfully, there were enough deck bearers that wanted experience points.

Liza peeked her head out of the adventurers guild.

"Oh that's lovely. It's got a very... 'I am legend' vibe now. Khaleesi's put all that stuff up so fast. She's growing up so fast my little girl."

It was true that she was very proud of her daughter. Or at least she had stopped gnashing her teeth about the entire setup. She had told Bagel several times. Bagel didn't understand a mother's love but he did feel the effects of by how much she talked about her daughter.

Raul, by contrast, was already running a dungeon. What more could a mother want than a boy that was willing to throw himself into danger to better all society. Bail couldn't imagine anything else. Clearly, this was what she wanted.

Paolo, Raul and Khaleesis father, would be doing the same thing if he hadn't picked a support role.

"Before you guys go can you check on the field hospital. I feel like the people there would really appreciate it," Liza said.

They had set up cots out front on 2nd avenue and on the sidewalk. There was only one person that was there and they hadn't even been injured during the judge insurance. They were just sleeping off hangover. That still meant that Paolo was standing next to them.

Paolo looked in his element. Bagel wasn't jealous. He appreciated somebody who wanted to do it exactly what they were. It's what cats did. And that way, he understood and that was part of it.

"We're doing the clown dungeon," Ashley said.