Xiz lifted Berney up off the ground and placed him in front of an empty seat. A third arm forked out of his left hand to pull the chair in behind him while a fourth forked out of his right hand, grabbing a glass of water from the kitchen.

After he realized he was still alive and in one piece, he calmed down, no longer shrieking, just taking in what had just happened. Xiz gave him the cup of water, patted his head, and then unwrapped his arms from him, returning them back to normal. “Feeling better?” he asked.

“Yeah... yeah kinda,” Berny answered, taking a sip from his cup. Suddenly, his face puckered up, eyes closed tight, shook his head, spat the water out, and then started coughing. “This is pure vinegar.”

Xiz laughed. I thought it was kind of funny too and so did Berny; we all laughed a bit.

“So you were telling the truth. A real demon, that’s wild yo.” Berny said in wonder, looking at Xiz and the paw. “What was the name of the town again?”

“Emerald Fields,”said Xiz.

Berny tapped away on his phone then turned to me. “There’re articles on it, a bunch. This one even says a witness claimed a guy came to town offering to fix the drought.”

“What!? I hope they didn’t say my name in it.” I searched online for the same article on my phone. “I don’t see your article. ‘From Barren to Bay: Emerald Fields Experiences Worst Flood in Its History Right After its Worst Drought’, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve got open right now,” answered Berny.

“Nope, don’t see it.”

“What do you mean? Woah, it just closed on my phone.”

“Go to your history and open it again.”

Berny showed me his phone. ‘404, page not found’.

“That’s odd. Maybe there’s a glitch?”

“Probs…” Berny continued messing with his phone. “It says in this other article that almost half the buildings were destroyed.”

“Oh man, half? That sucks. Is the storm still going on?” I asked.

“Yup, it says here there’s no sign of it slowing down.”

Berny put down his phone and asked the million dollar question. “Well what are you gonna do with the money? Can’t put it all at once in a bank, they’ll think you robbed someone.”

“Yeah, that’s what I need your expertise in. Are you still into crypto stuff?”

“You know it. Hmmm… so you want me to help you with cleaning your money then?”

“Yeah, I know you did a lot of stuff with it back in the day and kept telling everyone to get into it. You gotta be a millionaire by now. Did you ever get into crypto laundering?”

“...Yeah, yeah I did. Others have come to me asking for the kind of help you’re asking. Fine, I’ll help you out. Anything for my buddy.” Berny took out his laptop and placed it onto the coffee table, moving the snacks aside. He went to his room and grabbed his stylus with a digital drawing pad as well. He did some clicking and then spun the laptop around to me revealing a drawing app. "Okay, I need you to just draw something."

"...Why?"

“Just… humor me, come on,” shoving the stylus into my hand,

“If you say so,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders. I drew a stick figure with a sword and shield. "Done." I pushed the laptop back to Berny.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Great! Now I'll make up some random backgrounds, add different colors, some outfits... And done! This program has now made multiple pictures of your first drawing with minor changes."

Xiz scratched his head as he looked over Berny's shoulder. "What is this?"

"Excellent question, Xiz. We've made some NFTs with this script I've made. Next steps are to just put them online, sell'em to my multiple accounts for varying prices, and then the money is all yours! You'll have the proof you made'em and sold'em. Boom, your money's gonna be clean then."

“What’re NFTs?”

“Hmm, how do I explain this…?” asked Berney, scratching his head. “Best way to describe is it’s a proof of authenticity. In our case, if someone buys one of these pics then they would get the proof of purchase, that they’re the sole owner.”

“But can’t I just copy the picture? Or does it mean I keep the original?”

“You wouldn’t get the original, it’ll be a copy. Anyone can copy and paste this picture as many times as they want but no one can get the proof of purchase since that’s one of a kind and only you would have that.”

Xiz held my phone, looking up these NFTs online. "Wow, these are worth thousands for some pics."

"People just really want to have limited edition stuff I guess," I said while scratching my neck. "When will all this be done?"

"End of day. I'll put most in a digital wallet you can send more coins to and the rest of the money will go into your bank account. We're gonna use untraceable coins so if you get more of these we can clean it again and then you can use it."

"How can I repay you for this?"

"You know, for others I usually take two percent for the help, but since you’re my buddy, one percent."

"That's fair," I said with a shrug of my shoulders. "Works for me, thanks for the help bro."

"Any time. What's the plan now?"

"We need a place to crash to sell the next wish."

"Sure, you guys can take the guest room. Make yourself at home."

"I appreciate the help," I said. I went over to the room, put on my PJs, and then sunk into bed but I couldn’t go to sleep. I could feel the biggest grin of my life plastered on my face with some chuckles. I can’t believe it, my plan worked! The paw could grant wishes and I successfully sold one! I can even keep the money! With Berney’s help, this will all look legit! For once, my plans didn’t just blow up in my face. I’ve actually got a million bucks, and this is just the beginning; I’ve still got more wishes. I won’t have to worry about money anymore, this is life changing! My mind continued racing for most of the night, keeping me awake. I couldn’t stop my heart from fluttering with excitement. This was beyond anything I could imagine. Eventually, when sunlight peaked in through the blinds and birds started chirping, the tiredness finally took over, overpowering my excitement. My eyelids grew heavy, slowly closing and I sunk deeper and deeper into sleep...

***

Finally, I woke up in the afternoon. I splashed some water onto my face to wake up then went back to the living room. Xiz and Berny were both gone.

I checked my phone and saw the text Berny left me. He wrote 'Xiz went out to explore the city and I have some business to attend to. Take the spare key if you decide to go out.'

I raided the fridge, grabbed a bowl of cereal, and then plopped myself in front of the TV. I started flipping through the channels, in shock that someone still had cable in this day and age. I watched some GrungeBob while munching on my breakfast. When it was done, I put down the bowl, opened up Wide Web Movies, and started watching the new season of Denny Spectre. After that, I caught up on the latest episode of my favorite show, A Quack in Time.

Xiz came back soon after. “Man, I haven’t seen a new city in a few decades.”

He let me know what he was up to; freaking out guests at a haunted house. He would turn into gruesome monsters he saw in old horror movies and scared the heck out of customers. When the actors dressed up as monsters got confused about the new addition to the crew and confronted him about it, he just melted all of his flesh and bones then disappeared into the ground and traumatized even more people. He laughed to himself when recounting his tale.

I shook my head and reprimanded him. “Xiz, you can’t do that man. I know it’s a haunted house and all but you can’t just melt your flesh, that could mentally scar people. What if one of those guys had a heart condition? Tone down your pranks.”

“Ugh, fine…” he responded, furrowing his brow and crossing his arms begrudgingly. “Well, what’s the plan now?”

I shut off the TV and turned to him. "Time to work on the next wish.” I pulled out my phone and opened up my notes app. I crossed out all the big scale problems like fixing pollution, world peace, world hunger, helping towns with their dirty water, and advancing technology. The consequences could be catastrophic. All that were left were the small scale wishes. I saw one that read love but crossed that out, that didn’t seem to be a good idea. Finally, there was one that seemed simple enough to execute so I closed my phone, turned to Xiz, and said “let's go to the biggest cemetery in the city."