'Welcome to chapter one of How To Make Princess Go Bankrupt... And I'm your narrator Chase of House Phoenix...' Chase mindlessly grumbled internally as they stood in the back of an exceptionally long line at Seh Jenah's largest plaza.
"We should go clothes shopping after this!" Luna suggested, making Poppy grimace at the goddess.
Equan rolled his eyes and pointed at the blacksmith sign a couple blocks down.
"Or we could make fun of the crappy weapons made here." He also suggested, which made Chase nearly palm his face.
"Do you even know how economics work...?" Poppy asked with a deeper frown than Chase, knowing full well that Equan did not know how many better quality items a city like Seh Jenah would have compared to Solis or Equus... Which were both considered lower end cities in terms of economy and products.
"I would like to look at a potion shop or two..." Poppy whispered, looking into her ivory purse with the twitch of her left eyebrow following shortly after.
"Anything you want to do?" Luna asked Chase with the tilt of her head, which made Poppy turn around and stiffen her shoulders at the two of them.
"Actually, Chase I have quite a bit of money aside if you would like to buy any upgrades or really do anything for that matter." She said with what looked like a really forced smile on her face, which only made Luna shift to a disgusted and quite annoyed grimace.
Chase took a deep breath, before shaking his head without much enthusiasm.
"No thank you, I don't need anything as of right now." Which had been the best choice of words for his reputation... But now he had accidentally angered both of the women, who had chosen to now scowl at each other with a strange sense of rivalry and tension.
Equan: Who was mindless about pretty much everything, scratched his chin as if in deep thought.
"I've actually been quite curious of trying arrows with potions laced into the tips..." He nodded with a satisfied smile as he said it, and Poppy slumped her shoulders before eventually just giving up.
"Fine..." She said, knowing full well that Equan and Luna had found zero gold within their home, meaning that the three of them aside from Poppy were completely broke at the moment.
Slowly but surely, the line advanced and the time slipped by.
As the four of them walked down the busy street, Luna was smothering her face with bright pink cotton candy, which Equan was doing pretty much the same thing, leaving Chase and Poppy unhungry and lost in thought as they walked side by side.
Now that Chase thought about it, him and Poppy had never really gotten the chance to spend normal time with each other, seeing as most of the time they had spent together had been in attempts to kill someone or something or else, or even kill each other.
So, he was honestly left with a blank. He simply had no idea how to just enjoy himself without being a battle that could very well decide his life.
Luckily, Poppy probably had the very same way of thought, considering her face wore a very confused manner of expression, and occasionally she would attempt to say something but just click her tongue and return to her silence.
Meanwhile, as they walked to the potion shop along the Western line of large buildings, Equan had the opposite problem...
He could not be silent for the life of him, and continued telling stories of Olympia and even went as far back as his battle with Picto, which Chase had surprisingly never heard from the archer, nor Michael or Gabriel.
"Then once Gabe blew the fountain to the sky, I fired an electric arrow at the water below... And it shocked the living hell out of Picto, then Michael made this awesome arc of ice and Gabe hurled his trident at Picto's face, but just before it did... I actually noticed that the trident was going to miss since Gabe was not a ranged fighter and all of that, so I made a miraculous shot with my bow, hitting the trident with an arrow at the perfect angle and changing its course in an instant, obviously killing Picto on the spot and winning us the challenging fight that occurred that day!"
"So miraculous you would think it was made up on the spot..." Poppy groaned.
"Is your affinity perhaps... I don't know, maybe blatant lies?" Luna asked with quite the genuine tone.
Chase only rolled his eyes and ignored it, considering that the last part of the story was made up, and Gabriel probably had struck his mark in the heat of the moment.
Which obviously, Chase was quite proud of his allies... Including Equan, who had been a big reason as to why Unity had survived Olympia.
But he could not for the life of him, figure out why Equan made it such a priority to exaggerate stories as much as he did.
"Do you guys know of the three factions?" Poppy asked after a good bit of silence.
Chase shook his head, which Equan also did; however, Luna had actually nodded and glanced around as if someone could have possibly been listening.
"Hey? Before you tell us all about the city and how it works... Are you sure its all good for me to be walking around without my mask?" Chase asked, remembering that the air was actually hitting his face in public for once.
"You are way taller than you used to be, no one is going to read into it that much..." Poppy frowned, turning and scrunching her face as she probably disliked that they were the same height now.
"Tell us about the three factions." Equan said, finishing off his blue cotton candy.
"Okay, anyway... Basically, this city was originally just a collection of three separate cities that were run by three different families, those families being the House of Freznov, Durangor, and the royal family." Poppy paused and glanced around before continuing.
"Neither of the families could break the seemingly un-ending stalemate between the three of them, so the head of the royal family decided that the best course to prevent more civilians dying was to unite the three of them under one ruler, and submit Seh Jenah as a city of three cities all ran by different families but ruled by one person from the central family. The House of Freznov took over trading and commerce, and Durangor took over war and foreign affairs, as well as running the coliseum district..." Her voice lowered.
"But not many people know how the House of Durangor had came to such riches, considering the fact that the House was never known for having much money and were always described as brutish barbarians in the stories I've been told... But anyway, the royal family all voted on one of their representatives to become the king of the entire city, and that ended up being Phillip the third... Otherwise known as The Golden King." Her voice trailed off as they finally arrived outside of the potion shop.
Chase meanwhile nodded in thought, amazed at Poppy's knowledge on the history of Vallmora and all of its cities.
The four of them stepped into the shop, with certainty that Poppy's wealth would not survive this day.