"Even if you trap them within a safe zone, they're still going to be able to just walk out and leave it and buy someplace else if they have the warehouse card," Gladys said. "They're clearly trying to instigate you and in some way get you to pull your hand. But I think that after this next period, we're going to have to consider our resources versus their time."

  Gladys had dragged Bagel up to drones and scones, in effort to see if she could give him an image of what she was seeing compared to what he was seeing. He wasn't happy that the pigeons were gone. He wasn't happy at the squirrels were making strange moves.

  Two of the plots of land that hadn't been a single purchase had doubled in size. The third had expanded to four buildings along one street.

  "They're running into resource constraints. They can only get so many people to give them credits."

  It wasn't exactly what I thought was going to happen but squirrels must have had some long-term planning unless they....

  "They didn't put any thought into this. They just got the warehouse cards and started to use them. That does not bode well."

  Gladys flashed a smile. "That's exactly what I was thinking."

  "Now if I could just figure out a way to section off their claims. It would almost be worth it to just grab several of the pigeons and have them do an end run around these guys. I mean I'm going to use the streets around them to surround them. But yeah that seems like a lot of work."

  "Are you thinking about using the pigeons for this? I don't know if this is an enemy of my enemy situation. This looks more like a... Don't stop your enemy when they're in the middle of a mistake."

  Khaleesi flicked between a drone that was over Central Park and a drone that was over a building in the middle of Staten Island that had dozens of pigeons on top. They had clearly made a roost.

  Just as clearly they would up every so often swoop down and summon a card or two to join an endless battle against shade mobs and other Staten Island local mobs.

  Bagel watched as Khaleesi zoomed in on a pigeon. Dropping four cards at once into The fray. The summons began tearing up everything around them. Not for the first time, was in awe of the sheer magical power that a golden eagle would do in combat against a foe that had no recourse.

  Almost every single mob that was on Staten Island was ground bound. This meant that the pigeons had free rein if they used any sorts of flying creatures with a distance attack.

  The eagles had that ability. Bagel quickly looked around for Janet. She was floating somewhere up and behind him.

  "Janet what's the stats on that card- the golden eagle."

  Janet displayed the card status for him.

  ---Golden Eagle, Electric Type (3 electric energy)HP 150

  Lightning (Strike up to three opponents for 25 damage each)

  Weakness: Ground

  ---

  "Those are invaluable. We need to use more of those. If we buy up the place where they come from, people are going to not like that. With those stats? Everyone's going to want one. Heck I want one right now and I'm not even going to play with those. Help me figure out how to help these pigeons."

  Gladys made a clicking noise. A pen appeared, took a brief note and disappeared just as quickly. It was uncanny how quickly she got the thing that she wanted out of somebody else but that paled in comparison to how good Gladys was at hiding things on her body.

  Bagel was pretty sure that she was hiding at least four knives on her person. He wasn't afraid of that. It was a perk of the job that he was able to offer so much room to store these things. Shoot stored several weapons in inopportune places all over his Bodega and he did not mind it as long as he didn't accidentally cut himself.

  "We've got to make them an offer that they can't refuse. That's it. What do we have that they don't have?" Gladys closed her eyes. "Janet what do pigeons eat?"

  "Well like any good New Yorker, they eat everything, I bet they even have a special halal order or a way they take their bagel. These are the most bougie pigeons I've ever known. They're not even the only birds around."

  Bagel briefly considered if any of the delicious birds might be on his menu because they had gotten decks and had flown too close to his grill. And just as fast, he dismissed the idea. If they wanted to come to his Bodega, he would have them cooked up and perhaps fried in a vat of fat oil.

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  " We have to get them and come back and help us out? I mean we made the deal with him the first time right? So they should be good for their deal. I don't know what they're doing over there now, but maybe we need to look into why they decided they had to leave. Maybe they thought that land was going to become something premium after this."

  Eventually all the land would become premium and he'd be able to charge a price for people to rent it. And then he would finally feel safe and that would be wonderful. But that felt so far away, for how much he'd been doing, he wished that it was closer. Now if he could get rid of his squirrel problem then this would be handily resolved.

  It wouldn't take much. But it would take more than what he had.

  "Bagel are you giving me the concept of a plan look again? We need to have an actual plan, not just the concept."

  "I'm just saying that we need to think of a way to solve this problem together and I've only got so many ideas. So give me what you have so we can work this out."

  Bagel walked her through the steps that he wanted to take in order to get back into the pigeons good graces. Or at least in this case to get the pigeons to understand that he was on their side and they were going to need to all work together for once. It wasn't enough for him to just get the pigeons on his side. They had to want to be on his side and they had to stick to his side through to the end of this war. And then probably they had to stick through two after all of Manhattan was gone and returned to being a safe zone as well as most of the major New York metropolitan area. If they had a cadre of birds working with them then they could really do some damage.

  And it was up to him to bridge that Gap. Gladys listened and the more that he talked. The more that she started writing things down and working things out behind her own ideas as to how to capitalize on what he was doing and what she was doing.

  After not too long, Khaleesi and Ace began listening in as well and tried to help them understand how the drones going to fit into picture of surveillance above the pit. The squirrels. The pigeons were great but they could not give them a live feed of what they were doing so they would need drones to monitor La Noche and their activity until they were either on the side of the city and bagel or they were eradicated.

  Bagel did not want to eradicate any living beings except in the case that he got to eat them. It was the sapience that really bothered him. He would have gladly eaten any normal pigeon but the fact that they could talk to him? That just felt a little bit icky.

  With that ickiness, he saw a way to get them all.

  All he would have to do would be to get his plan into motion and the first thing you need to do was go and speak with Vince. Satisfy that Khaleesi and Ace were on his team for this, Bagel and Gladys went downstairs and around the corner up to the engineering department.

  Naturally, Vince wasn't in because it was crunch time for him as well but being alright. High hopes that he wouldn't find Vince down working on the pump and or the filter.

  They needed water badly. They especially needed potable water which was one of the more energy intensive things that Vince had to make for them. All day long, most of his effort was put towards putting energy into the pipe system. Use that energy to draw up water, then using that water to evaporate and recycle into every place else.

  It was just a lot easier said than done.

  ---

  "What do you mean you want me to make contact with the pigeons? They're like several miles away from me. Just please because I can see what they're doing and the effects does not mean that I can flag them down. It'll be easier for one of you guys to just like fly in or send a drone over and try to get their intention. I'm going to remind you that we only have a tentative hold on the foot of Staten Island. Not that we're going to be able to make it that far in, but it's a 10 to hold for a reason."

  Todd was on speakerphone as Ashley did her best to convey a little bit of the plan that had trickled down from Bagel to her and below.

  "Do I need to send Kate over there or not?" Ashley said.

  "I don't know. Maybe? I just can't get there without potentially putting people in harms way. It would be different if we send several teams, but the ones that I have here are already sleeping in shifts, and spend all of their time fighting."

  Ashley had to see how many teams she could send. People were wary of going into Staten Island now that they had to actually spend time there doing work. They couldn't just shoot fish in a barrel as much as they wanted to.

  Even though that was kind of what was happening without the ferry there to remove them immediately, people had a hard time thinking about it.

  Todd had set up advanced team in a a area that was easily defensible inside of a foreign military base and next to the bridge that led to Queens. So the team could easily retreat off the bridge. But still, there was something about being surrounded by mobs on every side except for the water behind you that stuck in your brain.

  People didn't like to think about their death. They didn't really like to think about how easily they could be overwhelmed by a monster wave. Staten Island was the first of many places that had been overrun by monsters. It was just the closest one to Manhattan and the only one that the city had put a lot of faith into Bagel and the Turtle Bay adventurous guild to actually effect some change to. The fact that the pigeons had seen what the humans are doing there and started to form experience points similarly meant that the work would be even easier.

  Still people would complain about it endlessly.

  It was like they didn't understand how much experience they could gain just by sticking around.

  Ashley, I had the phone call with Todd. Clearly she was going to need to figure out a way to advertise us better. Maybe if she just stuck to the script and made some sort of recruitment poster that drove their patriotic Spirit?

  There really wasn't a patriot experience to be had by New Yorkers save for experiencing a halal cart guy selling his wares for eight dollars. There was whatever wanderlust that had brought people to New York City and for those that were natives, there was the familiarity of it.

  She just needed to figure out a way to sell a quick trip to Staten Island. Just a little adventure; in and out in less than a day.