We bee-lined, or I’d like to think we did, back to the pseudo-hospital room. It seemed to be the one place I had to sleep, with all its blandness. Yet there was certain welcome calm in the simplicity of a white room with a bed and some cardboard cutouts. I sat on the bed and patted it.

“Come out of the card.”

“I am comfy in the card, master. Besides, the previous master tried to eat me.”

“Did he succeed?” I asked in all seriousness, because I had seen Blacky die horribly and come back unscathed, so it was a logical question.

“No, current master,” he answered, serviceably.

I rubbed my hands and wiggled my fingers to prepare for the pack-opening ritual. Then I realized. It was a pack of dogs. This whole world seemed powered by puns. And… not good ones at that.

Nonetheless, I needed to open the damn things. So I took both from my pocket and caressed the soft exterior. Those were good boosters, exquisite boosters. You could feel the quality of the envelopment’s foil, and the thermal sealing was masterfully done. It would preserve the contents virginal and protected from humidity while providing ease of opening for those learned in the ways of physical card games. I gave a flic with a finger to one of the packs, just to see it dangle back and forth. Flawless size to weight ratio.

I bit my arm to test if I was dreaming and previous instances of pain in this dimension were fabricated memories. It hurt. The most perfect boosters I had ever seen were in my hands, and they were real.

I licked one of the boosters. It tasted terribly. The right amount of terrible, though.

“So, I open this and the cards get automatically added to my collection, right? Can’t have them in my hands?”

“Yes, master, you can. Opening a pack puts the system into the overview status, which you can dismiss whenever you finish perusing the pack contents.”

“Blacky, dear dog, you are almost as useful as a virtual assistant. That’s the best a card-dog can aspire to. Keep on going like that.”

He started wagging his fluffy tail. “That fills me with mirth.”

“Whatever, look at this, appreciate the feeling, the sound of the foil against my fingers.” I said, caressing the booster, and then unceremoniously opening it and throwing the damn envelopment away. The cards were upside down, so I turned the small stack to reveal the bottom one.

The first card was a pug with a pug body and a pug head. This is just so you figure the most horrid pug you can, as every instance of the word “pug” makes the mental image more deformed. Pug. Pug. Pug. There, about that ugly of a dog it was. The poor thing was holding a small lance on his brachycephalic maw. God, it was like a normal dog skull had been converted to .rar format. It was a 1 cost 3/1 with the card text “Breathing issues”. I focused on the Keyword and wished to know more about it:

Breathing Issues: This card is automatically sent to the Rainbow Bridge after spending three allied turns on the field.

“I begin to think the deity managing this universe has a pretty sick sense of humor,” I thought out loud.

“Oh, that’s because you haven’t seen the Golden Retriever cards,” then Blacky made a solemn pause, “some have hemangiosarcoma.”

“Come again?”

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

“Hemangiosarcoma,” he repeated, with no change in his tone.

“A name so long can only mean cancer,” I mumbled, and passed the pug card to reveal the one underneath.

This one was a spell, it costed three omnikibble and depicted an Irish setter with “Like a buzz” painted in white letters over her red coat. She was inside a shelter’s cage and a stylized shadow of a woman loomed over her. The card had the icon that identified the “big breeds” category—this is, the silhouettes for a Golden Retriever and a German Shepherd. The card was named “She Will Be Adopted.”

The effect was the following:

Summon a “Goodgirl with the Broken Simile” from your deck, hand, or the Rainbow Bridge. You can ignore her effect for three turns.

“Blacky, what is the effect of the card named here?” I pointed at the textbox, and he read intently.

“If my memory doesn’t fail me, she returns to hand after attacking or blocking.”

The cringe made me screech inhumanly. The puns and references were becoming physically painful.

“What was that for?”

“I am allergic to Maroon 5,” I simply said, before passing the card to reveal the next one.

I was met by the cover model: Puli-merization, which costed 4.

Send to the Rainbow Bridge Puli cards in your field or from your hand to summon MerPuli tokens with the same stats and effects as the sent units. Grant them -1 attack. Draw Freddie MerPuli from your deck, or reduce his cost by 2 if he is already in your hand.

I let it go and revealed the next one: another spell. This one costed six, and was called “God Left the Door Open”. It had the symbol of middle sized breeds.

Discard a card to summon from the rainbow bridge up to nine cost 3 or less units. They can attack this turn, and return to the Rainbow Bridge when it ends.

“This one looks pretty good for a midrange beater. Blacky, is this card used in meta decks?”

“One or two of in pug aggro, master. The deck is on its last legs by the time they can play it, so they generally hold onto their worst card in hopes they draw it and it gives them enough fuel to give a coup de grace to a control, combo or midrange deck.”

“And you say this pugs deck… is fast?”

“Indeed.”

I began thinking on aiming for such a deck. Use a bunch of small units to whittle down the enemy health pool, and then, boom, finish with an army of undead pugs. Which sounded… weirdly unsettling.

The last card in the pack was a vanilla beater I won’t even bother to describe.

I cast the cards into the air and, as they fell, they disappeared, getting added to my collection. “Excellent service.”

I went and grabbed the next pack, and this one felt… slightly heavier.

“Blacky, do different card rarities weight differently?” Immediately after asking that, I remembered the sign of the store, and felt infinitely stupid.

“No. It must be said, though, that non-card goodies may have slight deviations from the norm due to errors in the compression system. And take that ‘may’ as an ‘often’.”

I licked my lips. This one could have something to eat inside.

But the fates aren’t so generous, the world isn’t so lenient.

Thus, as soon as the thermal sealing broke, an arm clad in a white sleeve patterned with black blotches came out, wiggling around, looking for a grasping point.

Naturally I let the pack fall, climbed on the bed and screamed like a stereotypical film housewife seeing a cockroach. A flying one.

What was crawling out of the pack with certain difficulty was, most likely, not related to Gregor Samsa in any way. Soon after the hand, the pack gave birth to a horned head.

“It’s a girl!” the scared me announced to the world, because, don’t lie to me, we all have waited our whole lives to admire the miracle of life. From a booster pack.

I wondered where booster packs had the teats. Were they even considered mammals?

Questions for later. Or for never, most likely.

“Muuu!” proclaimed the cowgirl as she took her other arm out of the pack.

“Oh, neat, she speaks Spanish,” said Blacky.

“No, yo no hablar español, yo solo mugir español. Muuu.”

I cleared my throat and stepped down of the bed to face her.

“Cuchame un poquito la reconcha de tu madre, vacaemierda, habla como la gente o te voy a volver un montón de achuras a la parrilla, pedazo de pelotuda atómica,” I calmly explained the situation to her.

“What? Muuuu.”

“I think she doesn’t speak your tongue past cow sounds and an explanation about not speaking your tongue past cow sounds, master,” contributed Blacky.

I felt compelled to thank a so-called Mariana. Who the fuck is Mariana? More questions for later.

She crawled out of the pack, revealing her full figure. To put it bluntly, if we were playing Yu-Gi-Oh, you would have needed three sacrifices to tribute summon her upper half.

She stomped the floor a couple times, making me redirect my attention to her legs. She had no feet, but hoofs, with all the digitigrade anatomy and loss of Onlyfans income that implies.

“Muu.”

I backed away slowly, gesturing Blacky to follow me. I would pick the card pack later. She jumped on the bed and started ruminating on the sheets.

“Don’t worry, master, her four stomachs can digest playmats just fine.”