Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

There we only so many fliers that could fit in the ferry. They had a big old wingspan and were not going to be able to flap like hummingbirds.

"It's terrible," Kate said, checking her console. Numbers flashed by and even Ashley's eyes went wide. Springing the net had been such terribly good idea that now she was wondering why they hadn't even thought of that to begin with.

"We're going to need a bigger net at this rate," Ashley said, tapping on something. Her own screen was full of options for her forge to create.

You live a nice if Kate had her own forage options. But she just got the area of effects mob that everybody really wanted. And the good thing about that one was that you could kill from afar. And the more that she worked it out, the more she was able to shape the field.

It was a good chance that they were going to be able to establish a foothold Staten Island just using their mops. You know if only they could make sure the brewery still had some cool beer and Kate's day would be made.

Kate checked her cards. All of her summons were out. She was maxed out on that but some were about to hit their time cap.

So as one went down another one out. She summoned several millions to go. Take care of business and follow one of them closely. One of our Omega rats that she'd swapped in for the durability was doing its best to stay between her and one of the enemies.

---

"I wonder how they're doing over there," Bagel said. "Be a real shame if they got some crappy ass cards because the mobs really sucked at everything except for poisoning people."

"It's not for you to worry about that right now Bagel you need to rest. Raul will take care of the store while you're here."

Big looked. It was going to be all right. He just didn't know if Raul was going to be all right.

He had given the humans the best chance chance that he could.

Now it was up to them.

---

"I really think that we need a machine gun or something like that," Ashley said.

Another wave of the bats were coming down at that hard and that was more than enough for Ashley to regret every moment of their hair brained scheme.

"Boss, we won't have one of those. We can make one but we need some special gases for the firing mechanism," Janet 2 said.

"Of course it's like that. You know what can you radio the NYPD and tell them that I need them to get their asses in order? I want them to requisition me a goddamn machine gun."

Ashley crossed her arms as the last remnants of the third wave of bats disappeared.

How bad has it been that this was not even last wave that they had seen. Staten island had so many people before this.

There had to be a way. Not all of them could have died. It was possible that... But Ashley was not one to give up. Just because it was overrun didn't mean that there couldn't be pockets of humanity hiding someplace underground.

The human spirit was indomitable, but the purple haze over the borough was not promising.

The only good thing that she could see was that it wasn't floating anywhere else. It looked like it was concealed there and by this time of day, only in the afternoon there would have been wind.

She remembered something about how the wind started the morning when the sand heated up on the shores and the beaches around and that caused the winds to shift patterns but she wasn't a meteorologist. Hell, she'd only been to the Jersey shore a few times at the insistence of some friends that had wanted to have a good time.

Ashley was usually down for a good time. But with all of these problems, she could point straight back to what she was seeing and it did not look good at all.

---

Felicia, I've been watching for a long time. Her drones were flying around the landing area that they had picked out. True, was going to be easier if they landed at the spot where the fair was supposed to dock up, but she had considered places nearby as well. In the end, it was already set up but in the past half hour as her drones heading down more and more problem children, the situation had changed.

"Is it me or is there a ton of mobs just sitting there?" She said.

Her father grimaced. He'd come to the same conclusion. Probably. It wasn't like you could just decide something on your own. But after seeing them line up in a place where they hadn't before, there was one thing that was clear.

"They're tracking the ferry. That's like hundreds of mobs right there."

Khaleesi drew in a deep breath. Her hands instinctively reached for her bangles. It was far too many in one place as if a dungeon has overcrowded to the max and...

"How many dungeons could there be?" She muttered. "For this many to come out?"

"We really need to establish a safe zone or the whole island is going to be lost."

At least the sign had finally arrived. Drones and scones, the adventurers guild tiny airborne LLC had a hand painted sign on the wall in between computer screens showing more and more doom. One of the older volunteers had wanted to help out and she hadn't had much else to do.

"Dad that's... This looks impossible unless we start bombing the shit out of the island. We can't be sure that the entire place has been overrun..."

Khaleesis mind raced. If only she had some dragons, then she my could raze the place to the ground. It was mostly dangerous because of how connected it was.

"Or we could destroy the bridges," her father said.

"Or we could destroy the bridges and tunnels but..."

But it wasn't up to them. The city had asked for their help. Khaleesi tool control of one of the drones and checked out the Verrazano bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn. There were several barricades along the way near the tolls but the crew of people there was minimal.

It looked like twenty four people with handguns were stopping an invasion. They were winning but they were no advancing.

Khaleesi had checked on the spot before.

"There should be more fighters there," she said.

Paolo, her father, sat next to her. "There should also be more mobs. What the guild is doing is giving them some relief."

"They need machine guns," Khaleesi said. "Where was that armory again?"

Khaleesi had read some book about the National guard and thought that she knew where something would be. She just wasn't sure exactly where it was.

"Even if we got to the armory. There's no chance that they would hand out a machine gun to a girl. It's not about your age though. They probably wanted it for themselves."

Her father knew a thing or two about that, but he wasn't willing to talk about his time in South America. They had left for a very good reason according to her mother. That they hadn't taken her back until she turned ten was a choice. Then covid happened and she hadn't been back since. She had thought about going back and this was the perfect time to be there.

She could be on the beach eating steaks but...
At least she was in a city where the people were trying to do something about it. She wasn't sure whether Rio was going to survive this. At some point in time. There would be an after.

Planes still worked. Helicopters still worked.

Boats obviously still worked. It was the other things that she worried about. Now she had left the city, she hadn't needed to worry about monsters and now you can barely go a block without seeing several unless someone had taken care of him.

"You're thinking of something aren't you? I went in on whatever you're doing. Why don't you tell me?"

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"Dad, this might surprise you but I don't know what we should be doing next. I know you're all about the children of the world are the future, but I'm still doing a day by day just like you."

He reached out of hand and put it on her shoulder. "No one's asking you to do everything. You just do the best you can."

"Thanks. It's hard to be serious when I felt like the whole world is a video game and I'm a speed runner, trying to hack it. But that is how things are."

"That sounds like my daughter. Now I'm going to step down check on the guys and see if anyone showed up looking for healing. I think you can handle all this by yourself without my input. You didn't need it before."

His smile was infectious. She couldn't stop but crack her own.

---

"I really thought that we would be able to at least make landfall but if we get close enough, it looks like they're just going to jump on here."

Ashley didn't like it anymore than anybody else here but they were not going to be able to do what they wanted. They could not get close enough without hundreds of mobs looking like they were going to attack them. They didn't make a clean clear landing otherwise there was going to be a problem. That problem being them being overrun. Already mobs had jumped into the water to try to to get close to them and the only thing that had stopped them was their slow swimming speed and the area of effect circled that emanated outside of Kate's turtle totem.

Several people inside of the guilds teams had flying based decks that they use judiciously to clean out the water, but nobody had any aquatic animals.

The humanoid ghosts that looked like the embodiment of struggle didn't even have that many hit points!

---

Shade, Trash
60 HP Darkness

10 Enemy is poisoned.

Weakness: Psychic

---

Nobody had wanted to put one of these shades into their deck but they looked like they were much more difficult to feed than they actually were. 60 hit points were not that many.

They were several evolved versions around that had more hit points and were more worrying, but none of those had decided to jump into the water and try to reach them. It almost looked like they could fly but instead they just floated down and their movements.

They were not graceful swimmers.

Despite having a baby humanoid appearance with long arms and a big wingspan, they moved like molasses through the water. This made it look like the world's worst triathlon was about to take place.

"Again. What does a girl have to do to get a damn machine gun?" Ashley said. "Someone's got to have one of those ghost gun printers somewhere, right?"

"Huh?" Kate said. The two women had settled into an overwatch stance as Janet 2 steered them back and forth parallel to the dock.

"You know ghost guns? Those people that want to make untraceable weapons?"

"I do not. But you can inform me?"

"Well, if you were raised around the right kind of right-wing nuts, you've probably heard about him, but if you never got into this debate... How do I put this?"

Kate leaned against the bulkhead, away from the viewing platform.

"They print guns like people print their resume. It took them years to figure out how to fix the lower receiver but... That's the part that makes a gun a gun. I'm still Facebook friends with some of my people from the Midwest and they get up in arms around this kind of debate."

Kate nodded, looking at her like she was a crazy person. "You just casually mentioned that there's a way to print weapons like that? But you already print more complicated things with your Forge..."

Ashley nodded.

"I'm going to use a forge for the same thing. This is ridiculous and if there's a way that I can speed this up? Then I will. Janet 2 will have a fit if I keep making AI assistants due to the cost and needing Rhodium but fuck this is ridiculous."

"The next thing you're going to tell me is that you're going to mount these machine guns after these drones so that they can fire. Does that sound correct?"

Ashley blushed, pushing a bit of hair behind an ear. "Somebody's got to do it right? We got to invent the Terminator?"

There was a large splash and blow and both women turned to look at it. It didn't look familiar. In fact, he outlined did not look like a person thankfully.

In a flash, Kate was next to her. "That kind of looks like a chair."

"Who the hell would? Gary? Are you freaking kidding me? I fucking told your ass..." Kate stormed off.

If the situation wasn't so serious, Ashley would have gone with her.

The ferry was moving back and forth along the shoreline, keeping roughly fifty meters distance.

It was enough to give them the range they needed. It was also enough to show them what was actually going on on the island. The island itself looked both packed by the shore and uninhabited. Every single mob was tracking them but none of the mobs wanted to jump to the water. Every so often, another flying mob would descend upon them, but they seemed prefer whoever was defending the Verrazano bridge. One of the things that Ashley, worried about was how those defenders were doing. The bridge itself was very far from Brooklyn and those people had to have walked over there or they could have been on the bridge when the cell went down. But in some way this choice they made continuing to defend the bridge felt like a heavy sacrifice.

And that wasn't the only bridge. What had Khaleesi said? Every single bridge had the same problem?

Well they couldn't solve it all. Especially not in one day. They would take turns rotating through people until they ran out of the food and water and then make their way back.

Somebody was going to figure this out. Ashley wanted the bigger part of the pie but also she understood how little they could do in front of this. If they could figure out where the dungeons were and stop them overflowing it'll be one thing but this looked... beyond repairing.

"I talked to Gary. This looks bad but nobody was hurt. They almost got hit by one of those floating technical mobs the Staten Island version apparently has poison. Who would have thought?"

Ashley was awoken for a reverie by a woman started snapping her face.

"Hello Earth to Ashley, are you doing all right?"

Ashley blinked several times.

"I'm just thinking about how they follow us because we're the closest people around but they're not going to run all the way to whoever's hold up at that bridge over there. I was wondering how it went."

Kate settled in on the rail next to her and the two-looked back the horde of shade mobs. They didn't have faces and especially not in this distance. They had a sort of intent about them that Ashley was fairly sure would increase as they got closer. So doing them early was a very good idea.

"What I'm thinking about all of this. I don't know what's going to happen next but I understand you're you look like you're going through it."

"I thought we were going to make some progress but it looks like we're just more of the status quo," Ashley said, waving a hand at the shoreline.

"It just feels like we can do something good here."

"Like I said, we're not going to be able to get the brewery back out of control today but we now know what it looks like so if we come back tomorrow we can be sure to check again."

"I don't care about the brewery anymore. I just want us supposed to get back safe."

Ashley flinched. "I'm going to call this off when we are exhausted for the most part, but before then? We are here."