Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse!

Obviously, breaking and entering and straight-up looting became "legal" in some sense—even without a dumb woke protest ongoing—though stealing someone’s stolen property was on the darker side of the gray area.

While it was a free-for-all for things that were just lying around—with the first come, first served basis in effect—it was still a little frowned upon to steal something that had just been repossessed, though there weren’t exactly rules on that.

But yeah, the law of the jungle still was becoming more and more of the accepted way to handle things—and not to victim-blame or anything—the earlier repossessors of such stolen items should’ve kept a better watch on their "belongings".

Even now, I’d still have a person or two guarding our vehicles outside or even in allied territories because we never know who’d be dumb enough to steal from us or mess with our vehicles and important items.

Then my thoughts were disrupted from Mauricio waving me over:

"Look, I’ll handle this shit. You keep yourselves busy until lunch, alright? I hate to waste your precious time but I owe you more than some food and I would really love to let you indulge on some things in this place under my credit. Just grab some things you’d like and tell them that I’ll pay for it, alright?"

I chuckled before I raised my hand for a fistbump, "Alright, thanks! I just really wanna check out this roofing and catwalk system of yours, I just had to find a way to get up there and building a pool sounds about right."

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"Roofing system? Oh~ I see, I see— Can’t you just ask to go up there?"

"I mean— I doubt you and Irene can do much shit on your own despite all your workers so I figured I’d spruce your roof with a smaller version of my pool area, you know?"

"Hah! I see, I see… Well, knock yourselves out— It’s pretty bare bones on our end but you might find some inspiration from the others. Do remember that not every catwalk had the safety railings in place—"

"I’m just called the ’Kid’, alright? And despite my youthful exuberance and tendency to mess around, I’m pretty good up here *knocks on my temple*, alright?"

He chuckled as he shook his head, "Alright, alright… I was just saying… See you in a few, then?"

"Yep! Bye~~~"

With that said, while its true that every place we visited had changed over the course of the apocalypse, I was really curious as to how the Intercity’s recent project was going—and it was their roofing system with catwalks and bridges connecting everything into another area of its own due to the unlimited possibilities of customizing these roofs.

Because from before, the first thing they fortified was their own mills and warehouses—and after that was making sure that not even a rat could pass through their walls by building catwalks all around it and watchtowers at certain points in, out, and around the Intercity before they started this roofing project.

And before I forgot, they did almost the same thing for their farms outside the Intercity though there were already greenhouses being built on top of these roofs in question but they weren’t interconnected or specialized in any way.

That was when Mauricio decided to use their building materials to have better accessibility on their roofs though it may sound like they all just built bridges to connect to each one, private properties still exist, so that was why catwalks were built around the outer edges of the roof as if they were sidewalks—at the same time, the only places people passing by could walk on.

So yeah, it was still a huge work in progress because of the materials needed—and having graced my Mr. Garciano’s building materials helped him out a lot—and that was one of the reasons they met earlier without me knowing.

Because looking above, it seemed like the catwalks had several iterations from everyone else DIY’ing the shit out of them with what was available—but with the help of Mr. Garciano’s builders and uniform construction materials—it looked prettier, sturdier, and more industry-grade from the earlier versions.

In any case, I took who was available with me—Kaley and June at the current moment—to the roof to get a better understanding of how much space was available and how we could make it as cozy and couple-friendly in a single day.

June already had some ideas, "I mean~ A hot tub would be better for them, right? They could just have one brought up here."

"Oh~ That sounds nice but they’d have guests like us from time to time so I think we really should have both?"

"Sure?"

Kaley chuckled, "I’m thinking of an area where Irene could grow some plants since her vision’s already healed and with the hot tub idea, there should be something like curtains to block the view or something along those lines if they wanted a little private time with each other… while you know…"

"Oh~ That’s true, that’s true— We can just have those office partitions that could easily be moved and we’d just place them by that water tank and reposition the solar panels elsewhere…"

"Wait, wait, we’re getting ahead of ourselves, we’re not here for a day. Just a few hours, at the very least!"

June chuckled, "Sounds really fun to do this though, what are our other plans before going back home?"

"Well, one of them is your return trip and one of them is for a much longer trip. Overseas. It’s true that I have a fuck ton on my plate but I can’t do anything about pending shit since it needs other people to do their own thing first.

But in the case of my extended family, whether they’d be willing to come with us or not, I just really want to see them and I already have the contact information of the nearest military base in Okiwana—"

"W-Wai— Can I come with you?!"

"To Japan?"

"Y-Yes! W-Where else?! I wanna go to Akiba, for once!"

"Oh… About that…"

"W-What’s wrong?"

"Umm… For one, it’s quite far from Okinawa, and two… I’m not really sure if you’ve heard but umm… Tokyo’s gone, June…"

"WHAT?! HOW— R-Right! S-Shit— Fuck! T-The missiles, right?!"

"Yep…"

Hearing that, June threw a cutesy tantrum about her dreams of visiting Akiba—or the holy land for nerds like us—but it didn’t take long before she realized that I was feeling more pain because not only do I have people living in those places—which weren’t my family members—but I hold the land of the rising sun close to my heart.

But yeah, I just waved her off with a smile when she tried to comfort me and apologize—but with Mauricio’s roof outline in my head, we went down and started a shopping spree for a budget version of MTV’s Cribs.

First off, we went on to look for a place that sold some metal and PVC pipes because not only would we need a frame for the DIY pool made with a tarp, but we’d also need a way to have the water tank’s water get into the pool.

After that, instead of looking for office partitions, we just acquired some plywood and made stands for them by using a bit of carpentry—though June painted them with some nice designs as Kaley was working extra hard to look for decorative plants.

In addition, we can’t seem to find someone who was peddling hot tubs at the current moment—but this place obviously had a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy who knows a place that had a storage space that sold them.

However, acquiring a working hot tub simply required a trip to the nearest mall because who the fuck would do that besides us?

But yeah, with the ample space provided for us, I’m pretty sure that Irene would appreciate a small-ish cozy home that had plenty of sun and ventilation compared to their place which was just a level above their storage area.

It would also give her a chance to have a bit of a social life because there’d be more chances for her to socialize with people if their residents would pass by their roof from time to time because she tends to just stay at home and wait for Mauricio to return.

Because even if the people who hurt her were already "situated" someplace else, there was still the fear of the same thing happening to her inside her head, and it’d need more time and like the sisters who came with us, a bit of exposure to get used to it.

In any case, fixing up Mauricio and Irene’s roof wasn’t a priority but it was just something we wanted to do for them. It’s just that the look on her face the moment she figured out that we’d opened the roof for her was enough to make our day so I had another idea:

"Mrs. Irene, are you allergic to pets or nah?"

"Hmm? Not e-exactly but we did have a pet pig before..."

"Oh~ What happened then?"

"Umm... W-We ate it?"

"Wut?"

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