It was a city bus. It was full of people. And it was honking as if it was going to be able to go through the layers of fence and wall. Two uniformed NYPD officers were trying to negotiate entrance, and bagel found himself sitting there, wondering how he could benefit from it all.

"We should let them know that we are cooking lunch," Raul said. "Hold on. Let me call Khaleesi."

A police officer walked over to two of them. Raul was still on the phone. He looked at Bagel. "Is there any chance that we can take this wall down temporarily so that the bus can make its way through? They would need to do it for the second one as well but we can do a temporary door."

"I already called the woman that knows how to fix it," Raul said getting off the phone.

"Officer, this is a safe zone not only because we bought it up. The walls keep mobs out," Bagel said.

The officer shrugged. "The city wants us to open up the bus route again. It sounds like we need to get more people into this safe zone. We'll have to install a gate or something on both ends."

With dawning horror, Bagel realized that now his perfect walls would have bus sized holes in them periodically. He wouldn't be able to fight the city on this.

"But... Won't this make us less less safe?" Bagel whispered to Raul.

"I trust that the city has a plan here. Also the guild is patrolling the streets Bagel. You have to put some trust in the government."

"I heard that."

Khaleesi ran over from the guild. "I came as fast as I could. What's this about a bus?"

The officer quickly explained the problem. Khaleesi drew her deck, sending her team to create a gate. A long arm that could obstruct mobs went up and down now, testing itself. She locked it in the up position with one of her mobs. This allowed them all to move out of the way of the packed bus which has to maneuver around the large NYPD incident command trailer that had been parked for a long time. There was enough room for the bus to go around, which is did and then it stopped in the middle of the road. The door opened and people streamed out towards the Bodega.

Bagel yelped as Raul began to move back to the shop. "Khaleesi, you're going to go get the other one, right?"

"Of course! I'll pop in when I'm done."

Only five people went into the Bodega, but over a dozen went across the street to examine the ground level shops. Only the middle eastern place behind the pizza shop was still open.

"Should we had back to..." Raul began.

"I'm more interested in the people checking out the other side of the street," Bagel said.

There was also the queue of people lined up both for the bodega and several people that were heading towards the Amish market. The word had gotten out. He was tempted to go ask them where they'd come from but the answer was going to be obviously uptown and then next question was going to be why was that important. It wasn't important where they came from. It was just important that they were here now and they were all going to be customers. He was going to have to sell cards.

"Raul, can you go ask some people what's going on? I'm going to have to go sell some cards aren't I?"

"On it boss. I will ring up Gladys too?"

"Let her know what's going on."

Bagel headed back into the Bodega. A group of people are standing by the grill already. I've been giving it an order. Another one looked hungrily as she perused the available cards on the tiny tablet that had taken up the use of letting people sort through all the stock they had and make a easy list for a worker to pick up.

Bagel slanted over the counter and jumped up proudly.

He spoke to the woman who took two steps back, almost hitting into the large shelving unit. Should we gain her sense of balance very quickly and adjusted the new handsomest boy the room. "They said that the owner was a cat but I didn't believe it."

Bagel sat there as if her saying something merited him responding in any reasonable amount of time. Eventually she returned to the counter.

"Are you looking for something in particular?"

She raised a single eyebrow. Clearly she had thought that this was going to be a different scenario than she had ended up in. That was fine, as Bagel was willing to play the part readily.

"I don't have a deck. I desperately want one but I need credits right?"

The cheapest deck that p. And that was a deck of 10 pizza rack cards. This point in time he could discount anybody looking for that specific deck as it was a utilitary and build that he didn't even add a item card to. It just gave people enough cards to give them access to the system and then with that they might be able to do better.

The mascot cards that were all over midtown? Those were perfect for a mono structural deck, the base kind that he gave to members of the adventurers guild.

"If you want a deck you can join up at the adventurers guild next door and just pledge to defeat monsters. Most people repay their debt within two days and a lot of that has to do with them not coming back. It's addicting to keep killing mobs out there."

"One of those mobs took down my husband. Stone cold clocked him in back of the neck. If my daughter hadn't been there with us and been a deck pair I would have died."

Bagel did not know what to say. That felt so personal and close to her and there had to be reason why she was revealing it to him. He certainly wasn't her friend. How did humans do this again? They did these little ice breakers and they sort of beat around the bush for a while before they asked what they wanted and by then they had enough buy-in that not accepting whatever ridiculous request was given was now some sort of faux pas.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

She held the tablet and continued swiping through, settling on something and then really looking close at it as she brought the tablet close to her eyes.

"You have shade guards? I've never seen those. Wherever did they come from?"

It was common knowledge that each neighborhood had its own mobs and each region or zip code in some cases had its own issues.

It wasn't always common knowledge whereas some mobs came from and if they had reasons that they came from. With the variable spawn rate, apparently attached to the amount of people in an area it wasn't like there would be enough cards for everyone to make a deck to their specifications, but there wasn't a variety in the different neighborhoods that New York rights were able to construct fairly successful deck. Especially with a merchant at the center of area trading, buying and selling cards.

"I wanted the full deck. I was told that you took cash."

Bagel was more amused than anything else. The side hadn't been made yet. That said what was going to say that they would no longer be taking cash for anything. Would there was nobody that was going to be taking their cash and depositing it into a bank if the banks were not really working anymore because of the new currency system.

"I won't be able to pay money? I took out as much as I could. I had $1,000 saved under the mattress..."

"Who am I going to give that to? That's going to give me anything close to the value that it's worth? I can't buy anything from the system with credits. There's no Federal reserve minting us anything. The only thing that means something is my ability to create food, drink and restock this store and others like it."

The woman's jaw dropped. Just as quickly, she picked it up. Big lessy and next question before. Bagel had seen it too many times. In fact, he's getting kind of bored of the amount of people that had come into his shop trying to pay with cash.

"We have a sign..."

"I thought because... My parents used to own so many buildings here. Their grandparents.. Their legacy is gone," she lowered her voice, but inside the shop, bagel had no problem hearing her mutter about how things were in the old times. It wasn't his issues with the way that the banks had just collapsed that it seemed intentional. Although it was in a large part due to nobody getting their direct deposit and then all of a sudden everyone owing each other ridiculous amounts of money, at least according to the news.

Bagel hadn't been in debt.

"I'm really sorry. I can't take you on as a charity case. I think that the bare minimum they're going to require you to do is one shift a day. Though the shifts are very gentle. You'd be put together with about five other people."

She brightened briefly. She looks like she'd worn a depression era coat to a 1920s party. It was out of place in the way older New Yorkers didn't really care if they were or not. Who needed fashion or style when one was rich. Well perhaps the ones that wanted to stay rich or the new money. This woman looked like old money.

Bagel was sympathetic though. Her entire fortune had gone away in the blink of an eye and now all she had was his charity.

"Look you can ask any of the adventurers guild people if they will help you out. They're very kind people. They even have a few positions that are not in combat roles that have to support the greater effort. I don't know that you're going to have to fight. And it doesn't even have to be you. It can be your mom's. But I can't give decks away. Not when there are people that are actually willing to do the work to advance and help each other."

The woman considered it for a little bit, but in the end, she walked over to the adventurous guild and grabbed a debt chit.

The small pink slip gave her new adventurers guild ID number and let him know that she was just going to get the basic deck.

"You'll get some more cards in time. If you just wait around, you can pay the guilt back. How much they are going to care about that. I've never seen somebody leave the guilt but there are other guilds."

The urge ask her where she was from was strong. It was almost certainly Lenox hill or someplace on the upper East Side. Nobody else would dress like she addressed. And as well, those were the directly most North neighborhoods.

He had an idea of what the mob was from both of those and he had enough in stock he could do with more. The one that he hadn't gotten was the one from Roosevelt Island. Nobody wanted to share that one around. Even though it was close, the island itself was safe and he was reasonably certain that somebody was buying up the land but unable to extend their reach to the rest of the city.

"I assume that you want the pizza rats?" Bagel said. "We also have the mascot deck which has some flying mascots mixed in."

She looked puzzled for a minute but then realized that he was talking to her. More than anything she looked shell-shocked, as if the simple active having to do work to be paid to exist did not compute. He fell for her. He really did but that was her problem.

He had problems of his own.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.