"Skunks are cute and you need to show them respect," Todd said, standing over the counter with his latest find.

"But fifty of them?" Bagel replied, his eyes glazing over at the stack of cards.

"I'm telling you what I got. I'm selling them to you. You are a card shop right? I see the signs. How about you just buy them from me?"

"One hundred credits. Two a piece," Bagel said.

Todd folded his arms. "One fifty."

"You're about to flood the market with all of these cards you got from Staten Island. I don't think that we're going to do so good. The shades are selling well because they're good in combat but these guys?"

Todd held up one the cards.

--- Skunkawhiff, darkness

HP 60

Rear Ender 10 Damage Poison effect, mobs and summons who are affected become poisoned

Special: Skunkawhiff can hit enemies up to 100M away.

---

"So you want me to give you an advantage? Because you are the first one to come up and sell these to me because you had some sort of inside help."

The artwork on the card did not look that interesting. If artwork could smell, it definitely would. At least this one could. He almost felt like it was poisoned just sniffing it. He took a moment to smell other cards that he had in his various cabinets and none of them were even remotely like that. In fact, none of the cards give out a small at all and now we want to dip the cards in his hand when I do them would have a smell.

He drew his hand. Todd gawked at him.

"What the heck are you doing?"

"I'm trying to see if my cards smell when they're in my hand."

They did not, in fact smell. Was there being stinky a thing that happened because of their innate darkness or just because of the card gave a poison aspect. He wasn't sure.

"I'll just take those. You're not going to get a better deal than this. And if you want to go set up a shop I will gladly rent you out a place where you can start selling your own cards."

Bagel was reasonably certain that Todd was not going to open up his own shop. There weren't a lot of people that had the will to set up a shop of any kind. But maybe soon some of the other humans would figure out that it was safer to do business like he did then to actually venture out and try to make the place safe.

"So my price? 150 credits for the lot?" Todd said.

Bagel didn't want to lose the negotiation but he also knew that he wasn't going to be getting any of this stock anytime soon. The real valuable stuff was the stuff that Gladys was trying to track down now. This didn't matter except for people that didn't have decks or were trying to maximize their decks.

At this point in time he was just gathering hard so that he could pass him on to people that would join the guilds and would then go into debt paying him back for his cards later. And then they would come into his shop and buy better cards giving him a customer basically for life. Humans were limited to how much they could do but with Janet, he could have the store run basically by itself.

"I will take this deal one time if you want to use that as a store credit to buy other cards. For example, I still haven't sold my gentrifier crab if you want to want to pay the rest in credits. I'm not going to give you 150 credits."

Todd sighed, eyeing the display of the tempting gentrifier crab. Janet had helpfully displayed it in between them so that both of them could see how much it was. What really got Bagel was how much energy it took to summon the crab. He could sum up to four creatures but this one would take four energy, meaning the person who would summon it would have to be at least level ten. There was probably a part to let him take out a fifth someone at once, but that was not nearly as important as his perks for the shop.

"Are you going to take the the crab card? It'll do really great in your mission."

Todd wavered several times. But in the end, Bagel knew who he was telling to and he knew what the man wanted. The man wanted a large cornerstone mob that he could use to destroy his enemies. Bagel wasn't sure if he had enough levels but he probably should by this point in time. Especially since he was the guy who was now responsible for buying up Staten Island real estate on behalf of the city.

"We need to talk about your plan to buy up Staten Island. Do you have any plan? Because eventually I'm going to ask the city to funnel credits to you for this purpose if they haven't done it yet."

Todd scratched his neck beard. It didn't look like much to Bagel but perhaps the man had gotten some sort of sand in it or something. Bagel had a hard time imagining what the landing actually was like. Thankfully, Janet had provided him with some video and pictures of the landing itself. He was not impressed.

"Now that you have this power, you have to understand that you are important to the city. They are going to want to invest in you. In fact, I need to introduce you to someone who is going to want to invest in Staten Island in particular."

Bagel had not seen Copernicus around recently. The cat was running his own operations. Of course Bagel would be interested in whatever the man had to say.

"Todd, why are you the chosen one?"

The man was still holding the card. "I'm sorry what?"

"Of all the people that could have done that did they pick you for a reason? Or were you so crazy that you volunteered?"

"Nobody else wanted to do it so I volunteered. The adventurers guild is like community service. I'm just trying to help out."

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Bagel could not roll his eyes any faster. It was like the boy was trying to hurt himself in his confusion. He was beginning to think that male humans were a bit more eccentric than the female ones.

That was when the door opened. Usually there would be someone visible. At this point in time Bagel didn't see a person try to walk in. By the door closed anyway, so he stepped a little further into the edge of the counter and to see Copernicus walking in. Of course he was. This would be the exact time that he would try to cut a deal with this man.

Copernicus sounded around finding the best spot to slowly climb his way up on top of the counter. He's sat next to bagel and bagel realize it. He hasn't seen meatball in a while. Perhaps Copernicus had told her to get out so they could have a chat but then again there are other humans in there. If Copernicus said something weird to say then he was going to have to ask Bagel to go to some myself so they can have a chat. Bagel eye. The the cat towers up above them. Suspiciously as if Copernicus had wanted them to move up there together.

Todd, bless his heart, was still standing watching Bagel and Copernicus.

"Is there a new cat in town? You have to be a deck bearer right?"

Copernicus gave him the casual to stay and look of a upper East Side woman who was being asked to wait for the newest hip thing that happened to just open up. Of course, he would entertain the boy if he found some value in it, but otherwise, he wouldn't even get close to it.

"I work with Mr. Bagel. My name is Copernicus. I actually have some business with him unless you are not done with your transaction?"

It didn't escape Bagel's notice that comparison to get said with and not four or any other type of hierarchical word. Genocide layer had been a interesting thing to unravel. All that they did was buy up stuff with money that they got from the cats that just killed as many mobs as they could. They use that money to make sure that the cats that works for jelly side kept comfortable when they were not on duty.

"I'm so sorry. Let me... 150 credits for store credit? I'll take it."

Bagel was now and old hand at transferring credits. In this case, he simply touched his tail to the man's fist and the the credits flowed into his screen. He double-checked it, swiping it out and back in but it still gave the same readout including the brand new 150 credits.

"Janet, give the man the card that he wants," Bagel said.

The card floated out of the expensive back display. Todd's eyes glinted as if he was receiving a bar of gold instead of a reward from a boss monster that he hadn't defeated. But Baylor has credits and he was happy. And now he could finally pay back the girls that he'd taken down the boss monster with. Their cut have been sitting around for about seven weeks.

Of course he was going to do something about it. He always wanted to settle accounts with people he regularly worked with.

It was just good business.

"Janet let Ashley know that she can collect her or Kate's credits whenever they're not busy," Bagel said. "Oh and Todd, please don't summon that inside here."

Bagel tapped a sign.

---

*No summons allowed larger than a cat inside of the Bodega.*

---

It was of course next to the sign of that said that employees were allowed to fight people if they wanted to. That kind of kept things in line for a while.

"I wasn't going to summon it, but I really want to. Thanks for the discount."

The door was open and Todd was outside before Bagel could form another quip.

He refocused his attention on Copernicus.

"Has everything been working out for you?"

Copernicus looked away from the door. "Oh, yes. Things are fine."

Bagel folded his front paws over themselves and then gave his full attention to Copernicus.

"You don't come by when things are fine. You'll come by when there's a problem. That's what we do."

"Of course, of course. I just have a little problem."

Bingo was going to let him sit there with that. If he wanted to advance his own interest he was going to have to speak. The stylist stretched out and Bagel wondered if he actually had a problem or if he just wanted to talk to Bagel. Either one wasn't a option.

"You don't need to have a problem to come talk to me-"

"One of our investments hasn't panned out."

It was inevitable. With the amount of things that they invested in at least a few of them wouldn't pan out the way they should. Bagel wasn't really concerned. They made enough money. Or at least they had told bagel that they'd made enough money in their newsletter that they sent out. He really wasn't for him to judge. And honestly he didn't care. He had responsibilities part of that was investing into Jellyside Layer.

But that was only part of his commitment. He didn't need to. Bagel had other issues that kept him thinking.

"What didn't work out?"

"We thought that more people would be interested in some of our futures items but people are just not buying concentrated orange juice."

"No they would not be doing that. Where would you even get that? You know what never mind, don't tell me."

"It wasn't even that big of our our portfolio but it's just that we didn't make any money off of it so it's not going to pan out."

"I don't think that the humans are going to buy concentrate orange juice from you. I don't know though. Maybe we should just sell them coffee or something. Humans like that. A cup of coffee and a pastry for one credit? They would eat that up."

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