It would have been so easy for Bagel to let the humans handle this one. And he had started to call them around to do things. He had refreshed the open air freeze fridge with water several times after volunteers had taken every single thing they could out and placed it into another fridge down the road. Multiple signs explain the water situation and what they were doing and still, people walked in and asked him dumb questions.

  "Hey cat, the water's been turned off in my building? Can you do something about that?"

  He huffed. "First off my name is Bagel. Some people call me Mr. Bagel. Some people call me boss. I might be your landlord but I have people that deal with that. Additionally, it seems to be a systemic problem."

  "Systemic?"

  "I have people for them."

  The mans look of confusion played against his scruffy beard. Of course they would have that. With that water, why would he even go and shave his face? So many things about what humans did. Just struck him as odd but the continual shaving of one's face to making it look clean and clear? That irked bagel so much.

  Male cats loved to have good beard. He would know he counted himself among their number.

  "You have people for what? Look can I have some water or what?"

  Bagel nodded. "Go to the open air fridge behind you. Don't drink it all at once. I have to restock that almost four times an hour now."

  "Thank you. You're the talking cat that's giving out the housing assistance, right?" The man walked over and grabbed the water and then returned.

  "That's a curious way to say that I offer people to stay within the buildings that I've acquired."

  "I heard the rent is exorbitant." He placed the water bottle onto the counter.

  "I charge market prices." Bagel raised an eyebrow.

  Bagel is faced with a smelly man with a smelly beard looking down at him. He wasn't impressed by the man. But he did look resolved and bagel would give that to him. There was so much resolve and so much angst that these humans had that he appreciated. They tried so hard to go back to their comfort. They wanted their creature comforts so much that they were willing to terraform their own planet so they didn't have to walk for five minutes.

  It was both amazing and terrifying at the same time. If there was a cat Society? They would never ever be able to be that coordinated. So perhaps it was a system integration making him think more like a human but was that coming at the cost?

  According to the man in front of him, it probably was.

  "Look if you want an apartment. It's only going to be one or two credits depending which one you're getting. Apparently there's no water right now and we're trying to fix it and we're doing the best we can. I will remind you that the institutions like the adventurers killed that is just next door did not exist three months ago. So if you want to take it out on anyone, take it out on the city government that did not plan for this eventuality."

  The man was speechless. "The city government? How would they have known? How could they predict this?"

  Bagel rolled his eyes as if to illustrate his point. He wanted the man to really get it for once in his life. It was not clear that he would.

  But just this once, he wanted to be able to convert someone easily to seeing his way.

  Without that's a coercion either implicit or explicit, he just wanted the man to believe him.

  "One or two credits? What is that-per day?"

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  "Per month. I want to make a profit but I also understand how things are right now. I can't buy up land unless people invest in the TSA or just buy and sell cards or goods here."

  "The man took a very long moment to adjust to something before he went back and grabbed another water. It made sense because he'd have to rank the first one. Who would want a second one. In fact, Bagel was going to need to restock again just to send more Waters over to the adventurers guild. And the NYPD had hit him up. The precinct 17 Captain had to come by and drained his stock twice that same day. A nice cool drink in the apocalypse might not be enough to tie everyone over, but this cat he liked it. And he was going to stick to that.

  ---

  With the water out, things became a bit more problematic. Really fast. Men would come in. Ask for water. They could restock. He would direct them to the little area down by the East River where they set up showers for people.

  After while, he had Janet make some signs for him so that he could just direct them. Then people ignore those signs. So he put some sign. That side. People also know those signs and kept asking him questions as if they could see any of the signs.

  Classic humans Not being able to see what was and run their eyes. At the same time, several dozen people came by looking to invest in his bonds with their earnings and or payoff their rent for the next foreseeable future.

  "At these rates, it would be ashamed for me to not pay three years in advance," Ace said. She wore her custom flight suit despite the fact that all of her flight time was on the drone. Bagel respected an outfit, but this felt like a uniform.

  Maybe one day he took would have a uniform for his people. It would be really nice to just be able to look at somebody and know that they worked for you. Not that he would be talking to people individually when you're at Gladys to direct his troops around.

  He was going to need his troops a lot to figure out how he was going to distribute his water. Not that he was about to get into the business of distributing water but someone was going to have to figure this out.

  And it was probably going to be him because he had innocently become the backbone of his neighborhood. If he could manage a store that he could manage to figure out how to keep these humans from throttling each other.

  "Ace, I don't think that I'm asking for a lot of money. But I am asking for money so that I can buy up more land and there'll be less mobs. The less mobs there are the better we are."

  "At least until we get overrun by places that couldn't keep it down. This is going to be one of those more typical problems to solve. I can already tell. And if we could just figure out a way to replenish people's water with drones then everyone will be happy."

  Bagel relaxed. If she brought the conversation into a tailspin about drones and that meant that she was comfortable. Khaleesi had told him and Ashley had told him that Ace loved to talk about drones. He didn't mind hearing about the little electronic floating things that had saved his tail on more than on more than one occasion. They had saved Meatball more than him.

  Drones are also the best way to fly about town and if he ever had his way then there would be a cat service taking drones from place to place.

  "All I'm saying is that we need to keep grabbing gas cars and turning them into drones as fast as possible. And then we need to figure out a way to watch them all. I'm just saying that I can still make that little drone school that I told the adventurers guild about. There's not that many artificial intelligence cards that are going to be able to help us. So we need to help ourselves."

  "I believe you, I do. We've got so many priorities though. If you can do that on your own with some help from us then I think that would be a great idea."

  Bagel knew that the humans only did a little bit of prodding to really follow through on some things when they were super interested. If he just got hurt to do what she wanted and figure out a way to pay her to do that then so long as it was something that he could benefit from he would do it.

  "Any chance you have any information about those new buildings we found up north?"

  Ace paused in between bites of a pastry. There had to be so many reasons why the frosting was now dropping but Bagel settled on her sheer magnetism.

  "Oh sorry Bagel all I should have said something. We think that we found out that one of them is a human."

  Bagels hackles raised all the way up. He hadn't expected a human.

  "All right. What do you think that means? Then? Do you think it's a human that's working for the squirrels like they got paid off to do this? Or do you think it's someone else?"

  "It's too early to tell, but the only person that's been in and out that we can tell was just dressed like a normal New Yorker. That didn't have a special uniform or anything like that to let us distinguish them. It will be really easy if they just wore squirrel costumes or something."

  Ace giggled. Bagel could picture it now, a line of humans in squirrel costumes would just be right. They would all walk in a row and... and Ace was staring.

  "I'm not... day dreaming about that at all."

  "Right. Well if you want me to talk to Liza about costumes, let me know. It would be pretty gaudy for us to have to dress up in costume. I like my flight suit but I earned this."

  "Of course, of course." Bagel wasn't going to stand in her way.

  Ace scarfed down the rest of her pastry.