53_The real treasure was the friendship

"Oh, hi there guys." The beggar said after pulling back his hood.

"Herman?!" Topo exclaimed.

"How did you find me? Is Granny Qbita still looking for me?" The human whispered sharply, hurriedly pulling his hood back up and trying to look inconspicuous again.

"So it was YOU! I suspected you might have been involved with this calamity." Topo said, shaking his head in disapproval and sheathing his sword.

Herman ignored the accusations, fidgeting nervously as he glanced around, half expecting the towering war mech to reappear and unleash another barrage of rockets.

"Don't worry, human, Granny Qbita has retired. She is probably halfway across Generica by now, drinking cocktails from coconuts on some tropical resort and hunting for a husband." Mopo said, looking down at the shoeless human wearing dirty rags. He hesitated for a moment longer than necessary, then finally sheathed his sword.

"Oh, that's good." Herman replied, pulling the hood down again and rising to his feet, the signs of worry now fully gone.

"So what is the deal with... all this?" Topo asked the bald beggar, gesturing at his dirty, torn outfit and the pile of valuables atop his begging bowl.

"What cheat skill have you unlocked this time? I will have you know that mind control abilities are strictly regulated by Fencetown and very much frowned upon. Especially ones that affect biological and mechanical life alike. I will have to put you down in... "The List.""

"Mind control? I have no idea what you are talking about. Also, I think I should be offended that you just assumed I am automatically at fault. I was just sitting here playing Tetris and listening to music while begging for copper coins. Which ISN'T illegal, mind you, certainly not sinister enough to be threatened to be put on... "THE LIST."" Herman said in indignation.

"O really?" Topo retorted.

"Then what is all of this?" The chief guardsman said, waving one hand at the pile of stuff on the ground.

Mopo had just finished collecting his items and his prized battle staff and had proceeded to separate the junk into separate piles. There was a pile of red rubies, gold coins, diamonds, precious jewelry, a teddy bear, and a half-melted ice cream sandwich. And another bigger pile of more generic stuff, of anything and everything.

"Oh, no, not again... It's the damn curse! It just won't leave me alone!" Herman growled, kicking the corner of a nearby building and tearing a nice chunk of the sturdy concrete with his bare foot.

"Stop that! We have enough problems already without you randomly demolishing the city around you. You are a bigger liability than Granny Qbita ever was!" Mopo reprimanded.

"Sorry..." Herman mumbled, guiltily placing both hands in his pants pockets, and looking like a pouting baby elephant in the aftermath of his first encounter with a china shop.

"Sigh... Did you even check your notifications? No, wait, don't answer that. Who am I even asking? Of course you didn't," Topo said, rolling his eyes.

"I will just assume you have maxed out your begging skill to the absolute maximum, or even beyond that."

"I swear, Mopo and I didn't even realize what we were doing. Hell, I was ready to give you my firstborn if it would have pleased you. Sorry, Herman, but you are going on "THE LIST,"" Topo said with finality.

"Hey, human, why were you begging in the first place? It's not like you are lacking in funds, not after destroying Generica's biggest defense against the human hordes," Mopo said as he dragged a small wooden cart, with him and Topo piling up all the junk in it.

Herman got the distinct feeling that Topo's brother didn't particularly like him. Ever since he first met him, shortly after destroying the great Generica firewall, the man just seemed to dislike him. Though he might have had a point, considering what Herman did and was still doing to the city...

"Well... That's the problem. I do have funds. Too much of them. All I get are mithril grand coins. Every single quest I complete gives me those." Herman absentmindedly pulled one from inside his digital overlay and threw it at the mechanoid general.

Mopo deftly caught the coin in midair and inspected it closely. "These are worthless," he finally said.

"What do you mean they are worthless? I don't get it. It's mithril, after all. It's the most valuable coin in Generica. You can buy a kingdom with just this single coin," Topo said with bafflement, taking the coin from Mopo and looking at it as if examining an ancient alien artifact.

"I don't want a kingdom. I want to buy supplies for my trip to Marun Valley. I need tools to build my hut too. Nobody accepts this," Herman said, picking up the coin and staring it down, then clasping it in his hand and crushing it into a cloud of pixels, single-handedly destroying trillions of credits in the blink of an eye.

"Gah! Why did you do that?!" Topo shrieked, clasping his head in both hands in shock. "Even if I work 100 lifetimes, I still wouldn't make a fraction of this single coin's worth," the bot lamented.

"Exactly. As I said, they are practically worthless. Nobody wants to take them. Nobody can give me change for infinity. I want copper! Copper buys you food, tools, and equipment."

"B-but..." Topo fumbled, the harsh reality of economics clashing with his sense of value.

"You know what? Here, take this. I don't want any of them," Herman said, and deposited a pile of mithril coins on the ground. The pile kept growing... and growing, until it was taller than Topo himself.

"They are all yours," Herman said, as if letting his friend take that one old, half-functioning stereo that had been gathering dust in his garage for ages.

"Are you insane? Do you want to get us all killed? Pick that up, pick it up, I said!" Mopo hissed at the human after finally recovering from the initial shock of the discovery.

Herman shrugged and tapped a finger on the pile of coins. It instantly dematerialized and reappeared inside his digital overlay coin balance.

And not a moment too soon, for that was when a swarm of dragons began appearing out of the woodwork.

Small and big, they clouded the skies above them, circling like sharks smelling blood in the water. Mini-dragons popped up from the nearby trash cans, their eyes darting around, searching for the source of the disturbance. Medium-sized adolescent ones started running towards them from across the street, their nostrils sniffing frantically for the source of the disturbance.

\_\_\_

"Get off me, I said! I don't have any loot, treasure, or valuable jewelry!" Herman said, grabbing the baby dragon clinging to his face and carefully depositing it on the ground, only for the hatchling to skitter on all fours onto his legs and crawl its way to his face again, sniffing madly around his head.

"Are you sure you don't have anything? You certainly do smell quite nice for a human." The hatchling said, taking a deep sniff at the annoyed human.

"Yes, I am sure. I keep telling you lot, you are smelling the cart with junk here, not me," Herman said for the umpteenth time, as he, Topo, and Mopo pushed the cart with junk across the dragon infested street.

Herman pushed the cart forward, while Topo checked the metadata of each item, then handed them to Mopo, who then passed them out back to their rightful owners.

"Hmmm, he might be right, guys," said a medium-sized dragon who picked the hatchling off Herman's face, placing it atop a pile of apples at a nearby vendor's stall.

The hatchling looked somewhat stunned, the intense sniffing of the human serving as catnip for the dragonling and temporarily immobilizing it.

"No, I'm telling you, I smelled something around here somewhere!" said yet another dragon, this time a much larger adult.

"There is a great horde in this city, a grand treasure beyond measure. We must have it!" The dragon declared, causing the surrounding gaggle of dragons to mumble among themselves. From the youngest hatchling to the oldest and wisest of calamities, each one had smelled the same thing. Rushing to claim the prize, only to find a cart of junk and a bald human who swore that the treasure was that pile of stuff on the cart. And yes, while some of the stuff was valuable and delicious (like that ice cream sandwich), the cart didn't contain anything particularly special.

At the end most of the dragons dispersed, though a lot of them still flew high above Herman in the hopes of finding the legendary treasure, his shiny bald head serving as a beacon for all the treasure hunters in the air.

...

"I am starting to wonder if signing that defense pact with the dragons' clan was a good thing after all." Mopo wondered aloud as he handed the last item in the cart to a grateful mechanoid cobbler.

All that was left now was random stuff nobody knew who it belonged to. Just random junk like dishes, bananas, a pillow, a single slipper, and all sorts of other items.

"At least they didn't try chasing Herman around. I think if they knew what he was hiding, they would have fought one another and destroyed the city for good this time, pact or no pact." Topo said, dubiously eyeing the human.

"Hey, don't look at me like that. Why do you keep blaming me for everything that happens around here? I am the victim here," the human protested as he pushed the cart down the street.

"Herman, you nearly destroyed Fencetown for the fourth time this week." Topo deadpanned.

"Oh, come on, it can't be that many times." Herman retorted, though his brows furrowed as he thought about it.

Not giving him any time to recover, Topo started counting.

"1: You were involved in causing the atomic scuffle between Generica and the Internet."

"2: You were single-handedly responsible for destroying the Great Generica firewall and causing the Internet battlecruisers to try and disintegrate the city with their death cannons."

"3: You angered the regional boss and left the city in ruins."

"4: You almost caused the destruction of our dragon allies AND our city."

"I am starting to wonder if number five is going to be the time when you finally succeed."

"You forgot that he could have killed that nanoid abomination Larry. Instead, he spared it and risked that frogozoid assimilating the entire virtual realm, not to mention that kaiju toad stomped the city as if it was his personal playground." Mopo dryly added, staring daggers at the sheepish human.

"Well... you got me there..." Herman said, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Still, I will try not to cause a sixth apocalypse." He adamantly promised.

"I am just going to stay here till I earn enough money to buy tools and supplies for the trip to my valley."

"Somehow I doubt your ability to stay out of trouble for more than a few hours, human. As the new ruler of Fencetown, I give you those 200 copper coins; consider it a gift. Just get out of here before you cause another apocalypse." Mopo said, trying to push the coins into Herman's hands and direct him towards the nearest path out of the city.

"No, no handouts!" Herman firmly said, standing his ground and effortlessly resisting the not-so-subtle nudges of the general.

"I get enough handouts from the System already. If I am going to be paid, I have to earn it!"

The tree men looked at one another. Herman was unwilling to budge on this. Mopo contemplated creative ways to kill, disable, or banish the human from the city. Topo stood between them, wondering how he got himself involved in all this to begin with.

"Okay, let's do this," Topo finally interjected before the situation could escalate.

"We still need to deal with this junk in the cart. So, Mopo, give Herman a quest to deliver it to the old folks' home. They can use this stuff for sure. Herman delivers it, then you pay him 200 coppers for the work. Then Staple and I will lead him to the valley outside the city. Problem solved."

"I want 50 coins," Herman said.

"You what?!" Mopo asked.

"You heard me. I want 50 copper coins. 200 is too much for the work."

Mopo stared down the insolent human, evaluating him with his sensors.

"150," he finally said.

"60," Herman retorted. "The old folks' home is just across the street. You don't expect me to take advantage of your generosity."

"Grr... 75, and the city will provide you with fresh ration cubes and mumbo juice boxes for the road," Mopo replied.

"75 coins, and you will give me your oldest, stalest ration cubes and rusty water."

"You ghrrh!" Mopo exclaimed at the human's audacity.

"Fine! Deal!" the general finally snapped, accepting the deal before the human could lower the reward even further.

"You drive a hard bargain, human," Mopo said, extending a metal arm for a handshake.

"Likewise...," Herman replied, clasping the arm of the general and shaking it firmly.

"What did I just watch...," Topo muttered, one palm firmly pressed to his face, shaking his head.