Chase shouldn't have been at all surprised when the small shop turned into a chain reaction of explosions in what quite litterly was the blink of his eyes.
He groaned, rolling over on a broken chair with his back against the ground and covered in char.
He looked up, wiping all of the dust and grime off of his face from the explosion.
First he glanced around for Poppy, as an annoying sensation of dizziness with a hint of ear ringing, took focus from all points of his attention.
Chase coughed, violently wiping at his head even more, until he finally spotted the ivory-haired girl out of the corner of his eye.
She was sitting with her back against a burning wall with wide eyes... Looking at what could have only been Hector of House Lavender...
Who just so happened to be crouching five or six meters in front of Poppy while holding his arms up in surrender...
"What the hell was that?!" Chase yelled, pulling himself into a standing position as he slowly walked towards the other two.
"No! Keep that hell-spawn away from me!" Hector screamed, crawling backwards as he shot a point at Poppy, who looked just as confused as Chase.
"What could you possibly be freaking out about?!" Chase shouted at the man who had lost all common sense.
Hector continued backing away, until he knocked his head against a small wooden halfway, in which case he instantly turned, rummaged through something and suddenly the halfway laid forth what looked like a small doggy door that Hector instantly backed into and...
Vanished?
Poppy looked up at Chase with the twitch of her eyebrow.
"Don't look at me, I'm not chasing the guy who willingly blew up his own shop..." Chase let out a sigh, and offered his hand to Poppy who only stood on her own and pushed away his offer of assistance.
"You good?" He asked, looking down at his clothes that had been bathed in carbon from the explosion.
"Mhm..." poppy answered, folding her arms and looking down at the shattered vial emptied of its liquids on the floor.
"He seen something..." Poppy muttered, lowering her body as she went to pick up the vial.
"Wait..." He grabbed her wrist as gently as possible before she could touch the vial.
"What? There is nothing it in anymore..." She frowned, her voice filled with a sense of defeat for whatever reason that Chase did not know of.
Chase; however, had no intentions of letting her pick up the vial, let alone find out who her actual father was, but he still picked the vial up before her and studied it with the curiosity within his own eyes.
"What?" Poppy asked, tilting her head and trying to snag the vial from his hands.
However, Poppy did not have soul sight, and therefor could not see the familiar speckles of draconic energy pulsating against the jagged edges of the broken vial...
'Zephyr...' Chase thought, shutting his eyes and immediately summoning a calm flame to slowly destroy what was left of the vial.
"Are you kidding me? Are you a child Chase?" She asked, frowning and crossing her arms as the vial slowly burned in Chase's hand.
"It isn't safe..." He mumbled.
"Bullshit... Whatever, let's just leave." Poppy groaned in detest before the two of them left on their way as several bystanders gave them strange looks as they casually walked out of a burning building as if it had been a normal exchange of goods between civilians of Seh Jenah.
...
Woof Woof!
A golden dog barked as it ran through the bushes in front of their park bench that they had chosen to eat lunch at.
Chase was leaning back against the bench with a puzzled expression on his face.
Poppy; however, was rummaging through her purse as she pulled out an insulated box that had shards of ice sticking out from the latch used to open it.
"Ehm..." Poppy scratched the scar on her cheek with her pointer finger as she glanced between the box and Chase.
"Hm?" Chase raised an eyebrow and then began to glance between the box and her.
"Could you open it?" She asked with a blank expression.
Chase stared blankly for a few moments before sighing and outstretching his hand for the girl to place the box in, and when she did he realized just why it had been so difficult for Poppy to open...
"Son of a-"
Poppy threw a hand over his mouth as a pair of children ran by with kites in their hands that bore the sigil of Seh Jenah on their surfaces.
"My Mis Mis Mo Mold...." Chase muttered from behind her hand as he could feel the surface of the box slowly consume his hand in ice.
"Just heat it up." She said as if regulating his temperature was something that could so easily be obtained.
Chase lifted his other hand and slowly pulled Poppy's hand off of his face, before looking down at his blue hand and slowly letting flames escape from his glands.
Little orange flames perked up along his wrist, before several green ones and even a handful of purple sparks began to light up across his forearm.
"That's good." Poppy said before snagging the box and poking Chase in the side of the face with the side of the box that had been submerged in large crystals of ice.
"Ow..." Chase said blankly as a cold shiver ran through his body, snuffing the flames on his arm out in an instant.
"Here." Poppy handed him a tin foil shrouded delicacy that only could be told of by its aroma as the physical food itself was hidden beneath probably three layers of covering.
"What is it?" Chase asked, tilting his head as he repeatedly continued to smell the covering.
"It's from Cinderveil, like one of the best traditional dishes sold there." She said, biting into her own food as she watched the sun slowly set in the horizon.
He unwrapped his food after a few moments of simply watching the sky, and tilted his head as the light from the sun revealed his meal.
It was a sort of crust, with several different toppings such as meat and cheese wrapped into a perfect triangle.
And it smelled of grease and cooked bread, with a hint of herbs.
"They call it Pizza, but here its just called triangle bread..." Poppy stated the fun fact before somehow already finishing her meal.
"Actually, there has been something I've been meaning to tell you..." Poppy continued, wiping her hands on the handkerchief that rested on her lap.
"Go ahead..." Chase said between bites, as he watched the golden dog jump into the air and eat a butterfly.
'Rest in peace butterfly...' He thought, awaiting Poppy's important change of tone to reveal its purpose.
"I am going to see my father in exactly one week... But, I will be returning after that with a surprise." She clasped her hands together and smiled.
Chase on the other hand could only feel tension as the man who had been trying to get him assassinated since birth was now going to see his adopted-daughter that had also just so happened to be one of Chase's best friends.
"Don't worry though, he still is under the assumption that you are dead, and me and him are on good terms as of right now, since my sister... Has well, lost herself I guess." She tried to reassure him, but for some reason the things she had just listed somehow someway made it even harder to not worry about this so called visit.
"Can I ask what the surprise is?" Chase asked, biting into his Pizza slice once again.
"Then it wouldn't be a surprise..." Poppy giggled, wagging her finger back and forth at Chase as if he were that dog in the bushes.
Chase frowned obviously, and finished his Pizza before standing and gazing deeply at the setting sun.
"So... Can I ask you for a very important favor?" She spoke up, tapping his shoulder gently.
"I suppose." He answered, his eyes unwavering as a familiar feeling crept into his chest.
Whatever she was going to ask...
Chase almost knew for certain that he was going to break whatever promise she was going to make him make.
"Can you just lie low for the rest of your time here? No big fights, no duels, and definitely no war. Just no war-starting, okay?"
She could not see his face.
And she would have smacked right across it had she been able to see it.
Bathed in the light of the sunset, Chase was wearing a gleeful grin across his lips...
...
"Have you heard, Jamie? Elite and Actor are set to fight Natalia and Lizzy in the next battle!" The boy yelled while clasping his hands together.
The action figure of Actor swaying left and right in his hand, as he spun in a circle to let his friend know just how excited he was for the next coliseum battle.
"Yeah... Do you think they can beat the Paladins of Seh Jenah?"
"Of course they can!" Jamie nodded with a large grin on his face, before lifting the action figure of Equan's masked toy...
He stared intently at the matte black mask on the archer's face.
"They can do it..."