Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

Ashley read over the daily adventurers guild notes from the secretary. Volunteer secretary, she had to keep reminding herself.

It was easy enough for them to find a working truck. A bit harder to find one of the ones with an electric battery. There were not that many gas station inside of Manhattan.

The hard part was setting up the electricity. The adventurers guild, using their connection to the guild itself was able to get it hooked up right out front on second avenue.

The grid was working, thanks to someone passionate about keeping it up. Ashley didn't know who was doing that, and was making plans to install solar on the roof of the building because of that issue.

The water was also working, something far more important, but perhaps less celebrated. Several large aquifers fed into New York City to make sure that it's eight million residents were able to have fresh clean water at all times of the day.

Now, there probably weren't that many people. She shuddered to imagine the sheer amount of losses.

The group that was heading over was going to need a lot of water to take with them because they didn't have any confirmation on the other side that the water was still working. In fact, since the overflow had begun, the adventurers guild had a big gun using their drones to figure out which way they could take the ferry food. Obviously, they were able to take it onto the normal route between Manhattan and Staten Island. There was a port where the ferry used to dock that would take in cars and people.

"Whitehall terminal?" Meatball said. "That sounds like a beer hall. Are we sure that's where we need to go?"

Ashley nodded. "It has to be there. Either the ferry is docked there or on the Staten Island side. And if there's two of them, the chances are that they are at both places. There's a small chance that they did not stop. And... We're getting confirmation today."

"The drone teams are coming up on the waterway now. We just need..." Khaleesi said.

The screens showed an expansive view of the east river as they flew southward.
A bright orange ferry was definitely parked at the station. Now if they can just find someone crazy enough to be at the helm then they might be in business.

It was all fun and games until somebody wanted to hijack the ferry.

"I'm reading up on when it takes to pilot one of these things and I want you to put me in for this," Khaleesi said. "My dad will help me."

"Well, why didn't you start with that. Paolo is welcome to help out as much as they want. I just don't think that he's going to be enough to move this ferry on his own. Especially if we don't have a good instructor's manual somewhere."

Ashley, like most Midwestern girls had grown up in a place where they wasn't much water. There were rivers around but there wasn't enough for ferry. It wasn't until she went to the Great lakes as a child that she really understood what a lake was instead of a pond. Now she was in New York City which was technically adjacent to an ocean. The east river eventually spilled into the ocean where this ferry was docked.

"I mean if Janet 2 is up to the job then we can use her as well," Ashley said.

"Girlboss, if you get me on board, I am confident that we can make it move," Janet 2 said.

The scavenger drone she had cobbled together with her forge card was one of the many benefits of her partnership with Bagel.

The fact that she was able to use the car and his pseudo mob to do things meant that her job was way easier.

"All right. So if Janet 2 can do that then we can do something about getting you on board. We just need to get you physically there right?"

Khaleesi shrugged. "I'm assuming that the guild has a way to get me there."

Meatball padded over to the poor girl. "Why did you say that? Why would you ever say that?"

All the color in Khaleesi's face drained as Ashley began to giggle.

---

"They're going to drive you in what?" Bagel said.

"They said something about a repurposed city bus?" Meatball replied. The two cats had taken up the spots on top of the cat tower conveniently located behind the counter of the bodega. A custom piece, it had every bit of character that a starving artisan in an apocalypse would put into it. Which is to say-it looked like the artisan had done it to feed his children and his children were hungry.

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Honestly, the world needed more Carpenters that were willing to create animal sized places and structures, especially now that so many animals were becoming awakened either intentionally or through the system, making them awakened.

"And you went along with this?" Bagel said.

"It's not like I have a choice. I am one of the stronger deck bearers. They kept throwing me into dungeons and I got a perk that let me pick a mantle card!"

Bagels eyes rolled in the back of his head. How long had she been saving this bombshell?

"I know what you're going to ask and it's only been a day. I wanted to really weigh in with you. Because it wasn't one of the dungeons. Probably converts one of my regular cards into a card like your Bodega."

Mantle cards or only granted to people that completed dungeons or were assigned a deck at the beginning ending of the system currents. That Bagel had gone at the handle card that directly affected him being able to buy up the land around himself to keep it safe. Meant that he was set apart from the rest of humanity and cats. Now if meatball was saying that she could buy a perk that let her get a mantle card, he was hoping that it would be able to help him alleviate his problems.

"Do you get to pick what it does? There were only so many possible mantle cards. If you got one like this..."

Meatball shook her head. "The perk lets me designate one of my cards as a mantle card and that it will power it up accordingly. I was going to use it on a were-house card."

That might be the best idea. Essentially. He would have told to do that on his own without special information. That she'd done so. Herself meant that she had all decided on something.

" You made a decision and you just wanted to run it by me before you did it."

Meatball nodded. He could feel her visibly relax. It wasn't weird that they were cuddling. They were roommates after all.

"I understand that you want to run something by me but you don't have to. You can just do your thing. Let me make this crystal clear. I don't control you. I'm only nominally in charge of you and that's only for me making sure that you're fed and able to rest here. Everything else? As far as I'm concerned you're on your own. You're welcome to stay as long as you want or set up shop wherever."

Meatball cuddled up a little bit closer. "You always say the nicest things."

Bagel had responsibilities but instead of that he just decided to take the afternoon off and take a nap. It sounded like she was going to need to think in a way that he couldn't really comment on anything. He fell into a deep companionable slumber.

Today or maybe tomorrow? She would actually have to go on this mission. And he was realizing that he was going to miss her. True, she would come back at the end of the day like she always did but it was just so much further. And would that fear of her not coming back? It was just so much more than he'd ever felt and it was so visceral..

Roommates leaving was obviously supposed to feel so visceral. Why did he never listen to the humans about this?

---

"I'm sorry you want how much for the Gentrifier crab?" The man asked.

"300 credits," Bagel replied.

"But it was 300 credits two months ago?"

"And I haven't sold it since."

The man was obviously trying to get a better price. For some reason. Humans wanted a haggle. They all did not want to heckle. Or at least even want them to hack them down. He was fine with them losing in some sort of bidding war against him. Because the more that he made the better he felt and the better. He felt the quicker that the neighborhood was going to be safe and cleaned up. Well maybe not cleaned up but cleaned out of mobs.

"Unless you have some reason to stick around that's not going to change. This one was harder fought and I won it in my first dungeon," Bagel said. "Take her to leave it."

The man choked a little bit. He was definitely one of the regulars from The adventurers guild though couldn't place his name. He had the neck beard and looked like he was part of some paramilitary organization. Why did all the women wear tight black leggings and all the men wore combat pants that were inspired by the cross between an EMT and a police officer pant?

It was beyond him and not really his problem. Humans could wear whenever they wanted to wear. Unless the man had the 300 credits, he wouldn't be giving him anything.

"What if I earned it some other way?"

Bagels intense focus. He was bald, well past middle age, probably in his fifties. He looked like he had been professional.

But Bagel couldn't deal with whatever profession it was that had made the man so rude. Maybe he had worked for one of the embassies nearby before. His hands. They look old and mottled but the other than his pants looked well put together small amount of blood on the pants was a little distracting.

"Is that your blood?"

The man sputtered. "I'm sorry?"

"Other humans won't be able to tell this right now. That is blood just from the smell. And some of it's fresh. Now I'm not a dog and I'm not able to determine what blood type it is, but I'm pretty sure that it's not legal to kill humans so you could have a good explanation. I will take this time also to remind you that we are directly next to a large police presence. Further, they really like me as evidenced by the fact that there was a large police presence right here."

The man looked very shocked and took a very extremely long time to compose himself. Bagel would not let the man off easily. Inside of his shop, his word was law and even though the man looked like he was a part of the adventurers guilds big old hadn't seen a license and he definitely hadn't seen it. Registration card. All he knew was that the man wanted that card badly and that he'd come back for it. Bagel had half of mine to give it to him. Hope it's 300 credits versus having to deal with a sociopath who came back 2 months later for a card they just had to have.

"I'm so sorry. I think we got off on the wrong foot. This was somebody else's blood from the adventurers guild. I didn't kill anybody. In fact, they're fine now because I used a heel card on them"

It was very likely that the man had gotten the heel card from his shop or from a random draw for fighting in this location. He was by any account available, the only owner of a card shop in the entire neighborhood.

He would welcome competition but nobody at the time for it when they were just trying to survive and make their way in the world. At least all the humans were the parents were trying to find a way out of this mess.

"Can I start over?"

"I am more than ready for you to try that."