Peace is too often bought with blood.

  TJ had moved into his spare room. Not packed a bag and decided to stay a few days, but had informed his uncle he would be living in the house then spent two afternoons moving everything in. The cats had sat in a row, watching as he'd appear by the front door and carry yet another armload up the stairs, their heads moving in casual unison. When Brom had offered to make up the spare room that afternoon on the loading dock, this hadn't quite been what he'd intended. But here he was, setting his home point to Brom's house, taking up one of the spaces in its register. A feature Brom hadn't known existed until TJ had pointed it out. The fast travel network was scary efficient, beyond the bus line Brom assumed it to have replaced.

  It was obvious from his nephew's explanation that things had fully broken down between him and his father. Jason just seemed to be wholly stuck in this downward spiral. In this new world, all his validation metrics no longer worked. Nobody cared that he owned a home. Fancy cars were just piles of scrap materials, drug away by horses to be salvaged down for the metals. The job he'd been so proud of was barely needed under the oversight of the System. His entire social circle was made of similar people, those whose everything revolved around their modest successes and feedback loops of reinforcement, and they were crushed under a world that valued measurable strength.

  Collapsed under a crisis of self-worth, Jason seemingly couldn't spare much time for the son he'd been so worried about. The more TJ had described his father's attitude, the more Brom had felt foolish for trying to prop up that relationship. Say what he would about his own father, Brom had no doubts that had he been an only child or had his brothers been as troubled as he was, their relationship would have been better. It was the disappointment and stubborn pride that had ruined things between them, not an obvious selfish narcissism. Brom was starting to realize that in the world of Jason Jones, TJ's existence was just an item off life's checkbox. Everything after that had been societal obligation.

  Now here he was in the kitchen, making pizza bread for dinner, and wondering how he'd ended up here. Thankfully, TJ was his own person at this point. At sixteen, he just needed guidance over the finish line of adulthood, a few lessons here and there, the actual hard part of child rearing was done. Brom was iffy on fatherhood and absolutely wanted no part of being a single parent, but he could make a decent enough guardian. Still, in reality, they barely knew each other. Their relationship was only a year old, and Brom knew at this point that much of TJ's comfort with him was because he was the 'cool uncle'. He'd never had to discipline the kid beyond a firm word and a change of subject.

  The rustle of clothes and flop of a body behind him told him TJ had taken up his usual spot on the stool. "All done getting everything arranged?"

  "Yeah, that's the last of it. How's dinner coming along?"

  "Assembling now, it just has to go into the oven to melt the cheese and crisp the edges." He glanced back over his shoulder, TJ sitting there with Brulé on his lap, stroking the siamese gremlin and listening to her make her happy chitters. "Remember to wash your hands before you eat, or you'll end up with cat hair in your meal."

  "I hate to tell you this, Uncle Brom, but you have five cats. I'd be surprised if there wasn't cat hair in my meal." TJ grinned back, knowing he was being cheeky. Brom was diligent about keeping the cat hair to a minimum through grooming and weekly house cleaning routines.

  Brom snorted, smiling a bit. "An occasional hair is a hazard. If you don't wash your hands, you'll make hair a topping. Capiche?" He made the mobster hand gesture to follow it and earned himself a laugh from his nephew. That made him puff up a bit. The kid needed more laughs right now.

  For a moment, there was silence as Brom finished topping the breads and banged them in the oven, wiping his hands off with a kitchen towel. He puttered around, tidying up as the broiling commenced, fetching dishes for the breads to be served on. He could sense that TJ had something he wanted to ask, and Brom could guess exactly what it was. Tonight was the night. The night of the full moon. He'd have to trek down to Aria Beach and see what this whole deal with the Sea God was.

  The oven timer chimed just as TJ opened his mouth, prompting the teen to suck the breath he'd just let out back in. Like he was rewinding the words back down his throat before they'd crossed the threshold of his lips.

  "We'll talk about it after dinner. Okay?" Brom pre-empted the explosion, bleeding off the pregnant tension and letting the relaxed atmosphere reassert itself. "No sense in ruining the meal! When are you going to get my genuine original pizza bread again?"

  "I don't know. The next time you come home too tired to make anything, so you just cut a loaf in half, apply the sauce you made weeks ago, slice a sausage, and slap on some cheese." TJ smirked, Brulé abandoning his lap for one of her usual resting spots. "It's good, Uncle B, but it's not exactly the most complicated thing you can make."

  "Yeah, well, the regional goods puts a bit of a damper on what I can make."

  TJ shook his head. "Everyone's complaining about that. Honestly, it's really cool that you're still able to make most things. Everyone's waiting for region travel to unlock so that we can start getting trade going on. You know anything about that?" Was TJ trying to shamelessly get the information out of his suddenly well-connected uncle? Yes, he was.

  Too bad for the kid, Brom didn't know either. "That's not something they've shared with me if it's in the works. I'm not actually being offered a seat at the table, kiddo. I'm just PR." He snapped his fingers. "Like, remember how in the first movie Cap was just a glorified USO act? That's me. I do stuff that grabs headlines and keeps people's morale up. And I am doing some good. I've helped get a lot of dungeon data and cleared a couple of hunting grounds so that lower levels can safely get experience. The town just needed a couple of weeks to get its head in the right place, and I was able to buy that kind of time."

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He was proud of himself. It felt damn good to be a success for once.

  "Yeah. Trust me. You made me popular at school. Suddenly, everyone wants to ask me questions about you. It's awkward as hell." Especially since, prior to a year ago, TJ would only have been able to relay the ill opinions of his elders. "...hey Uncle B? Thanks for not actually being a shitty human being."

  Brom was juggling the pizza bread pan, pausing and looking back at TJ. "Huh? Where'd that come from, kiddo?"

  - Burning

  Whoops! He'd gotten distracted, and his fingers had almost paid the price. The pan clattered from his grip and onto the stove top, and he wiggled his hand a bit. It wasn't actually hurting, but instinct told him to do it.

  "Just felt like saying it. Don't read into it too much." TJ looked away awkwardly. Teenagers didn't do compliments well, usually. Brom would let it slide.

  The pizza bread was slipped onto a plate and slid into place for TJ to take. Brom's own portion was in his hand, being waved over before he crunched into a corner of it. "Yup, hot, fuck. Might want to let it cool a little." Not that he'd taken his own advice.

  "Too late." TJ had dug right into the piping hot food and was now mirroring Brom's actions with less success.

  Laughter followed, the two of them talking about nothing important in that fundamentally important way. Brom had long ago understood that sometimes, conversations about the insignificant were the building blocks that supported blood ties. Being able to just talk and be heard, you couldn't put a price on that. It felt good, too, to connect with any member of his family. Like it cracked the door that maybe, in the future, he might be able to have a conversation like this with more of them. Just because JJ was a lost cause didn't mean he hated Mason too. Mason wasn't actually that bad. Hopefully, his little brother was using that big brain of his and his love of the outdoors to stay safe.

  "Tonight's the night, right?"

  TJ's voice brought Brom back to the here and now, and he blinked, his brain taking a moment to catch up.

  "Oh, right, the quest."

  [Quest: The Sea God's Test]

  - Return to Aria Beach on the night of the full moon!

  The information hadn't changed a bit, no reminder, no nothing. Hell, reading it over, Brom realized he'd been calling it 'The Sea King's Test'. This was so much worse, he didn't put it past the System to have arranged for this world to have more tangible Gods now. More Greek Pantheon, less New Testament. The hands-on kind with shitty personalities. He chewed a bite of food to buy himself a little time before giving in. "There's not much to tell."

  TJ rolled his eyes, putting his elbows on the bar top and spreading his hands. "Oh, c'mon. There's gotta be something. Like, how'd you get it again?"

  Brom rolled his eyes. He'd told TJ a little about it that day on the loading dock, just to help distract the kid. That was coming back to bite him. "I already told you. That first night, I got lured down to Aria Beach by the sirens. I took care of one, and another one told me I was 'worthy'. Ding, quest pop up!" He put his plate in the sink, brushing crumbs from his lips.

  "Okay, well, I haven't heard of anyone else getting a quest after killing a siren, so is it unique? Like, rewarded for the first person to kill one?" TJ's head was tipped to the side, propped on his fist, eyes bright as he kept digging to satisfy his curiosity.

  Brom blinked. Fuck. Was it unique? How did he tell? "It doesn't look any different than any other quest. Maybe nobody else fulfilled some hidden requirement? I don't know what the trigger conditions were. I was just underwater, holding this struggling fish person by the gills, then I decided they didn't need their head anymore."

  "You killed a siren underwater? Oh, wait, you've got that ring. For a second there, I wondered if you could breathe underwater." TJ handed over his plate when Brom gestured for it, then stretched and slipped off the stool. "So, it's not unique, but it is difficult to trigger. Otherwise, we'd have heard at least one other person getting it."

  "I dunno about that kiddo. I mean, you know I've got it because you're my family and I told you. I'm pretty sure I haven't told anyone else?" No, maybe he'd mentioned it to one of his groups in passing. Just a small talk thing to make the dungeon go faster? Nothing was coming to mind, though. "If there are others who will be there tonight, it could be they were just quiet about it. I mean, I'm pretty confident, but let's say for a moment you're not me. You don't have hundreds of HP to play with and hands that nothing's been able to catch safely so far. Maybe you'd be a little more cautious. Maybe you'd hesitate to talk about it because you just don't know. What if something with bad intentions does something?"

  TJ opened his mouth to dismiss it and then fell silent again. People were still learning the rules of the world. The 'Do' and 'Do Not' guidelines. What if you could steal someone's quest? What if someone was personally motivated to make you fail? Could they interfere? He shuddered suddenly, thinking about it. "...holy. I never thought of it like that."

  It was sobering for the both of them. Because they knew, in the future, it would happen. A jilted lover might weaken someone just enough for a quest to finish them off. Meddling parents are sabotaging children in a misguided attempt to keep them 'safe'. Making those early quests fail, stunting their growth, forcing reliance over independence. Any number of petty grudges vented through simply fucking up someone's golden opportunity.

  No. It was better to keep your quests to yourself.