Quest Name: Quiet Reflection
Details: Help tend some of the graves at the base of the plateau in Reliquaer. Whether you spend the time contemplating the universe or goofing off with a friend, you'll be compensated for the effort.
Word Count: 1400 Words
Modding: Request what you'd prefer when you post the quest. Mod summon if needed.
Reward: 50 Florence

Ya know when you were lost in a new world full of magic you took any job you could get, whether it was working Piano at a place that couldn’t fully decide if it was a resteraunt or a bar, or helping out in the mines with the family who’s daughter had been your first point of contact in this world. What Niso hadn’t expected on this list of odd jobs was tending to graves of all things. Wasn’t that meant to be left to more respectable people who knew what they were doing? Rather than, you know, whatever bozo happened to stumble on the job in a newspaper add?

Whatever he guessed, work was work, but it was certainly still odd work to say the least.

Niso pulled his new jacket up onto his shoulders, a canvas like fabric and a bit more heavy duty than the jacket he’d brought with him from the other world. He felt it was a nice new look and more importantly it meant he didn’t have to risk ruining his good jacket in escapades and work like this. Last time he’d took an ‘odd job’ just for a bit of quick cash he’d been chased by dogs and shot, so he wasn’t expecting much different here. Well. He was. It was just a graveyard he had to tend afterall, what could be so bad about that.

Maybe zombies exist in this world, was a thought that briefly passed through his mind. Yeah that er…that was both incredibly hope inspiring, and terrifying in equal measure.

Ghosts would be nice, ghosts could be sane. He could be a pretty chill ghost he thought, just gently messing with people to stay fun.

Right, back to the task at hand. Tending graves. Now Niso planned to just do the bare minimum for this job. He didn’t have much respect for fellow living people, and he had even less respect for the idiots who managed to die in this world of magic and voodoo. Apparently immortality had been achieved by others than himself here, so he was curious why more hadn’t. Of course he wasn’t accounting for the fact some races were inherently immortal, and that was the difference. His method of immortality would still be seen as dark and unnatural by many, so he may not be sharing those details with anyone any time soon himself.

For the first…lets say third of the graveyard, Niso tried to stay focused and just stick to a habit. Cu the grass, carefully remove any dead flowers left behind on graves without leaving them completely bare. He even washed down a gravestone or two, but such repetitive activity could only hold the attention of someone like him for so long. A long sigh escaped him as he reached one of the graves, hooking himself onto the stone slap and using it for a seat as he enjoyed a break. Was he really only getting 50 florence for this? He’d need to see if he could compare a few items similar to stuff in his world, figure out the exchange rate so he could realize just how mad he should be about that. God he hated having to worry about where his money was coming from…

He could steal…heck given the environment he could start grave robbing, there was probably a shovel somewhere in the caretaker’s shed…nah. Too evil. None of them were using any of their crap but something about going through the effort to unearth a dead body for something he could probably steal a lot more easily from the living….yeeeeah that wasn’t so okay to him. Logically it should still be better, but it just didn’t ring right in his head.

Cracking open a can of fizzy juice against a jagged part of the grave’s design, Niso took a moment to just lean back as much as this thin seat would let him and relax. He didn’t fully register it, but truth is he’d been worrying a fair bit about money since they came here. He had no real concept of how much money mattered when he had too much of it to spend, and now here he was having to get jobs…Sera seemed to be doing okay, with her performances and the like. Niso just wanted to make sure he was doing his part to keep up he guessed…he didn’t feel like he had to be ‘the man’ or anything, providing for her, he just wanted to make sure he was doing his part and not leaving her to do it all herself or anything.

He needed to make sure he wasn’t just some wild card and could actually be relied on a bit in this new topsy turvy world tree.

Tipping back his head to finish his juice, he was careful to stuff the empty can back in his jacket pocket before carrying on with his work, though as he hopped off his current grave, something flickered in the corner of his eye. Did he just read-oh. Oh no. Heh. Yeah that was stupid. Looking at the grave beside the one he’d been sitting on, the last name was similar, but where he’d thought he’d read Konto was actually another name…

Heh. Yeah, he hadn’t really been thinking…if Mia was here, that potentially meant another him could be here right? That didn’t worry him too much when it finally registered in is conscious brain, what actually worried him was another possibility.

Letting out a faint, wheezing chuckle to himself, he briefly dismissed the possibility. Yeah, Mia was the same old same old despite being a dragon, so he’d be the same too if he was here no? Yeah. His parents would still be dead, and this version of him would have done it…yeah? As he walked back to the spots he hadn’t tended yet, Niso’s eyes found themselves flickering to any grave that remotely came close to his own last name, or the first names of his parents…why did he have to get something so stupid in his head now of all times? He was meant to be focusing on a job here for Arceus-

Before Niso could really stop himself, he was back to treating each grave individually just to give himself an excuse to read the names while still doing his job. It ended up taking him a fair while but eventually he was satisfied that, in this graveyard at least, he’d done a fair job where he needed to. And…neither his or his parents names were here. There was a Konto name here or there, but he didn’t have any memory of relatives names beyond his parents, so he couldn’t even mentally check if there was a familial connection or just the same name and that was that. Rubbing the back of his neck as he sat with his back against the final gravestone, Niso pulled out the phone he’d gotten to keep in touch with the others across the flowers, eyes looking at his contacts, thinking who to call.

He should probably just…put it away, go home, sleep. Forget about this. It was easy. He’d forgotten about a lot of things after a good night’s sleep….but…

Lifting up the phone as it began to dial, he’d call Sera later..maybe. This was a dumb idea and furthermore all he knew she knew about his parents was they weren’t in the picture. He’d never told her he murdered them himself when he first ‘came out of his shell’ as the little chaos worshipper he’d grown to be. No…he’d remind himself what she knew before addressing that. One thing Niso was never privy to was just how much she stood by him despite circumstances. She wasn’t aware fully of how she’d accidentally revealed his name to an Interpol agent, the conversation she may have had with Nik when the two of them first got together. A part of him, despite all the crazy stuff he’d done, thought there was still some straw he could find that could break that camel’s back.

Instead, here he was calling Mia, looking for more information on this wild goose chase.

The two wouldn’t talk for too long. Niso would just mention his parents passing away and being curious if things might be a bit different here. Mia would remind him they wouldn’t be ‘his’ parents but that didn’t matter too much to Niso. He kinda just…wanted the solace of knowing a version of his parents might still be around.

Mia ended up informing him he was far from the first to do something like this and he’d likely not be the last. There was an agency here or there that tried to find natives who aligned with arriving outsiders. Happy enough with that, Niso declined the offer for a ride home since Mia was apparently in the area, and started a hike to get his pay for the day and go home.