Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

"How many times have you used that restock ability?"

Bagel woke up with a start.

"I'm sorry what?"

He took a second to see who was talking to him.

"You look exhausted," the woman said, leaning over him. Her hair blocked off some of the light.

"I was...I was..."

"According to Janet you have been constantly using your restock cards."

Bagel could barely lift his head up.

"They need me."

"They need you to be functional. No one is going to ask you to do more than you can. Raul grabbed two restock cards from the overflow cards and put them in his deck. The Bodega will be fine."

Bagel resisted it but it was far easier to let the woman get her way. He would figure out a way to get her back later. It was going to be a rough time.

"There's a limit to how many times you can pull cards in a day. You hit the hard limit. You're not allowed to do this to yourself. The city needs you."

Bagel did his best attempt to wave her off and that didn't work very well. But he wasn't trying as hard as he normally did and it wasn't his day. He didn't like being tired. He didn't like not being able to be in control of the situation.

He especially didn't like not being able to go down to the Bodega and sell some cards as that had always made him feel good.

He was willing to let her be in charge this moment and he would do whatever she was doing. But it felt difficult to let this go. Every hair on his body made him think that this was not what he wanted to do. Instinctively he reached for his deck and he drew a hand. But he didn't even want to bring his paw up to cast anything. He had energy dedicated to one cook and one worker downstairs as well as Bodega itself.

He couldn't summon much else.

"I'm going to let this pass without incident but only because I'm so tired," he said.

"That's a good boy. That's a very handsome boy."

Once again he was reminded how lovely her hands felt against his aching muscles. How long had he held his tension. It felt like forever. It felt like it had been years since the system arrived but it only been 2 months.

How had he gotten like this in such short order?

The days where he was not worried about anything were long gone.

Why was he thinking about what the humans are doing and how he was going to do for them what he wanted to do for the rest of the cats. It didn't make any sense but he was going to roll with it.

There wasn't some pac Bond that kept them doing things. It was just how he felt. He wanted to help the humans that were helping him and the ones that came and tried to extort him? Fuck those guys.

He didn't want to deal with anybody who was trying to extort him.

Maybe he needs to figure out which kind of humans he wanted to deal with and which ones he didn't want to deal with. That was pretty easy. He likes dealing with nice people. He didn't like dealing with mean people. Did that make him a jerk?

No so long as he got his credits he'll be fine. And he didn't really leave the credits so long as a humans defended his spot. But in order for them to defend his spot he was going to need to... Keep filling them up with food.

This is one of the things that never mind says to him but..
Eventually he wouldn't be able to support the amount of humans that needed food from them. Then what? Was going to have to open up a second shop? Would that shop still be the same?

The thing that saved him was that he locked in the way the shop was in the beginning.

He wasn't entirely sure but he had an inkling that if he tried to claim a different Bodega right now with his card that it would not be saved the way that it was. That was a problem.

The warehouses that they got would let them create food but only so much. If the place didn't have food initially then it was going to be very limited. And then at some point in time their food would run out and the humans would panic. So far it hadn't been a problem but...

"I need to check how many restock cards I have because I'm getting worried."

---

Khaleesi stepped off the scale. Since the beginning of the system, when Earl had grabbed her and her mother and her father and taking them all to midtown, things had been hectic. She hadn't even thought about what she was eating. She just ate by impulse and did her best.

She was never hungry per se, but she known a few friends that had eating disorders. More than anything, she had felt strong and powerful. She'd been moving. She'd been part of things.

She hadn't expected to find the scale but she was curious.

Drones and scones had taken off. It had become its own thing with only a minimal amount of oversight needed. But when she saw the number on the scale she gasped.

She had lost fifteen pounds in two months.

"Fuck."

****

Ashley was glad that they had a view. That changed when this guy grew dark. When she looked up and it was just filled with so many flying toxic mobs. She didn't want to look up anymore.

She didn't want to view anymore.

What she wanted at that exact moment was to have a machine gun that she could point up there and just let loose with.

"I wish that we could upgrade the range of your totem. For fucks sake, that looks like a hundred."

The beasts looks like vampire bats with long legs. As they flew back and forth, their long tails trailed them.

Stolen story; please report.

"Do those tails look like...?" Kate said.

"I didn't say it."

They both knew exactly what the tails looked like.

Kate crossed her arms. "We need to get some sort of machine gun together. Maybe some hearing protection and uhhhh... Condoms?"

Below them several flying mascots where trying to fly out and draw the floating cloud of bats into their orbit. The idea was that if they brought them close enough to the shift that they would be able to knock them down using Kate's totem turtle. The mascots would lure their men through the back of the ferry which was wide open and then try to lure them to the front of the ferry where various mobs would just be there to punch them into the deck.

The plan was for them to bring the whole pack but they kept only being able to tear off one or two as if the pack itself had some sort of cohesion.

Thus far, every mob that had followed humans around would attack them on site. Usually they would attack the first human they saw.

"Isn't that weird? I would expect them all to follow the mascots. They need to draw them out a little quicker don't you think?"

"I'm just glad they don't have a ranged attack. I've been holding on to my heal card this whole time," Kate said.

"That's one way but..."

The cloud of shadows took that long to shift. Then, the shade went away as they all started zooming towards the ferry.

It was at this point that Ashley really wish that she had spent some time in the girl scouts learning how to fire a machine gun or something. Nothing in her life had repaired her for stealing a ferry, riding it down the East River and then having to fight demonic bat creatures with several dozen people.

She grabbed Kate's hand. She squeezed. Kate pulsed back.

It was enough.

Janet began to fire a series of lasers at them. The damn things range was very long. The losers didn't stop until they hit something. So if she got several wings clipped and they went down. She wasn't surprised to see that she gained level almost immediately. She was surprised to see that it was level 50. She'd been waiting for that for a while.

"I just hit level fifty" she said matter of factly.

"Tell us your secret. Do you get another perk at fifty?"

Ashley was not surprised to see that she did. Not only that, she had decided that she would take a perk that would help her with her blueprinting and salvaging. The first one that she had taken at level 25 had helped her with her salvage abilities. Now she was looking towards using it offensively. It wasn't enough to just get a car and then turn it into something. She needed to create weapons.

"Are you going to take the weapons one?"

"I don't really think I have a choice do I? Especially right now?"

Kate pumped her fists. It'll be too easy to just forget that cute had been into this idea for a while. Of course what that meant... could have been a lot of things.

"Get ready, here they come."

Both women summon the max amount of creatures they could at the same time. Kate's balloon creature flew up in between them and the cloud of poisonous mobs.

Tentacles flashed as it did. It did its best to catch every single one at the same time.

Eight tentacles grabbed onto eight bats. As it struggled to stop them, several of the bats tried to pull it in all directions. They were instantly stymied and all of them began to fall.

Behind them, a second layer came up.

"Back inside!"

They ducked back inside the porthole from the viewing side. It wasn't that secure. Several windows would have been smashed in immediately if Ashley's salvaged mobs were not up to the task.

"We need more flyers," Ashley said. "Fuck I should have been building that."

It was already a done deal so you shouldn't need to dwell on it.

There were two flanks of the enemy.

One group went to the second floor where all the passengers would sit. The other group went to the lower floor where the cars would be loaded up. With Janet at the hell, the entire ferry ride was just trying to attract trouble.

Well trouble slammed into the bulkhead on the outside and for the first time Ashley was thinking about how thick the walls were. Her next thought was how would she get the heck out of here if she needed to. And she saw several places where she get a life jacket. She'd never in her life. Wanted to assume the Hudson River but she was getting close to having to make that a backup plan.

That is, of course if this Ferry went down and then they couldn't get into one of the robots were there for this exact reason.

Well maybe not for this exact reason. She's out of that. The fairy was designed to stop mobs from attacking. Several large bags sounded out as The counter tap again producing results. With the the several Dawson hostile mobs now within in the area of effect of her total, it was short work until they were all done.

One of the mobs went into the water and she cursed her luck. Most of them had landed on the side deck and they could get those cards really easily, but anything that hell that the water was gone in so many ways.

It was going to take too much for them to search for anything that fell out there and they were going to get enough cards either way. That entire Island was full of spawns and if they killed each one, they would get so much more than they bargained for.