Equan sat on the floor atop the stairs with his back against his own door... The sun was only halfway through its cycle meaning that it was still quite early in the day, so when Poppy stomped up the stairs with a frustrated expression on her face, she was confused as to why Equan was sitting outside of his room and not inside of it.
She looked down as her lips formed a frowning shape.
"What are you doing?" She asked in her usual royalty-ridden tone.
Equan scowled, not even bothering to make eye-contact with the fraudulent princess.
She stood there for a few seconds in amazement at Equan's ignorance, before eventually huffing and reaching for the knob of his door.
Equan jolted with a spark of lightning, immediately standing and grabbing her wrist.
"I would really recommend not going in there..." Equan said with a frantic look in his lightning blue eyes.
"What the hell is in there?! Oh my gods, Equan is there a body in your room!?" Poppy just about drew her spear right then and there, before Equan backed away, forcing an obviously nervous smile, and motioning her to open the door by all means.
And so she did with a satisfied nod.
"I don't get it." She eventually said after studying the inside of Equan's room, in which... She found nothing, just a really beat in bed and a pair of expensive shoes.
However, she turned to see that Equan was cowering behind a stack of Kaylynn's boxes in the hallway.
"Really... This crap again?" Poppy sighed as she filled her eyes with elemental energy, immediately sending photographic energy into the room before her, in this sudden case she quickly saw the frowning lesser god sitting up on the bed with a bewildered expression on his face and pajamas strung over his titan-like body.
"Ah..." Poppy made sure to alert Equan of the incoming monster, as if he couldn't already hear Volaris's colossal footsteps approaching the hallway.
"WAIT!" Equan yelled, standing up and trying to dart down the stairs; however, he froze as the lesser god induced his energy onto the world around them.
'Oh my gods...' Poppy thought in absolute astonishment, as she reaching for a small vial around her waist and squeezed with an axis-induced fist.
The vial shattered and Volaris's form immediately vanished right as thunder began to form along his knuckles.
"What did you do?!" Equan asked, now laying down on the floor with his neck laid upon the ancient wooden wall.
Poppy frowned, looking down at the blood flowing from her palm.
"It's just an illusion repellant, I didn't actually think it would work on a lesser god though..." Poppy said, scratching the scar on her cheek.
"So, are you going to attack me next?" Equan asked, not even bothering to stand up with a pathetic look of defeat on his face.
"No." Poppy stared at Equan with a blank expression.
"Stop doing that please... It's creepy." Equan started to stand up, pulling on the wall as it suddenly gave out from his grip. Notably causing Equan to fall as clumps of wood landed on him.
Poppy laughed.
...
The reason that Poppy had gone looking for Equan in the first place, was that she had come to terms with his and Chase's decision and had decided to support the both of them in their coming battle later that night.
Which is why Poppy had actually went and forced Equan out of the house for training, and now they stood out in the ashen forest ten meters apart from each other.
"What could you possibly teach me?" Equan asked, tilting his head in confusion and annoyance that he had been forced to come here, especially without Chase to keep Poppy's attention off of him for the most part.
"Where is Chase?" Equan asked, tilting his head further to right.
"I'm not sure... He went off the radar after he left with Justin last night... Do you think he is mad at me?" She asked, slumping her shoulders.
"I doubt he cares... He's worried about other things right now." Equan shrugged, just before twirling his bow along his fingertips with a yawn.
"Worried about something more important than a documented battle against Paladins? More important than outing himself in front of countless people?" Poppy stomped her foot.
"He's such an idiot!" She stomped her foot again.
Equan shrugged.
"Why are you always so worried about the negatives?" Equan asked, shrugging his shoulders in annoyance.
"The hell do you mean negatives? I think you mean possibilities... Dear Underclassman..." Poppy forced a bitter smile with the words that seemed to have been dragging on her shoulders for a while at that point.
Equan frowned. "That's what this is about?" He rolled his eyes in awe, before sighing as he strung his bow with a ghostly lunar arrow from his infinite quiver.
Poppy visibly gritted her teeth, tightening her grip on the spear in the both of her hands.
"No! I don't want to fight you over it!" Poppy groaned in annoyance, forming a defensive stance before Equan of House Lightning.
"Nah, you still don't see me as an equal..." Equan's eyes hit the ground in defiance, before pulling the string of his bow back and firing a barrage of lightning arrows at Poppy, who immediately vanished into a thousand tiny particles of light, reappearing behind Equan with once again another stomp of her foot.
Equan turned, twisting his body as he let it fall, an arrow already on its way towards Poppy's shoulder.
"Damn you!" She screamed, turning her body intangible, letting the arrow slip right through her shoulder, jabbing into a tree somewhere behind her.
"You wanted training? Did you not?" Equan chuckled, flipping into the air from his prone position and landed with his bow already drawn and body low to the ground.
"Fine..." Poppy growled.
And so they clashed, Poppy's spear slashing over top of Equan's head, cutting one of his newly knotted medium length dreads, causing his face to visibly show disgust.
And so, in his ducking position, Equan let forth a powerful sweep of the legs with lightning infused in every second of the attack.
Poppy was dumbfounded, completely stunned that he would for something as dirty as that.
Her body hit the ground with a thud, and just before she could catch herself and counter-attack...
"Hey Chase? You made it!" Equan called out, causing Poppy to naturally follow his gaze, only to be struck in the ribs and brought to the ground with an arrow pointed at her forehead.
"Oldest trick in the book..." Equan mumbled, rubbing the top of his head before returning his hand to the string, which he had casually held back with just his teeth.
'What the hell has Luke done to you...' Poppy thought, before remembering what she had just fallen for.
"Restart Equan... Let me up." Poppy tried to shove him off, but her hands only felt sparks of electricity that only slightly shocked the living hell out of her limbs.
"You going to this festival with Chase?" Equan grinned, teetering left and right, his fingertips almost dancing terrifyingly along the feathers of the arrow, letting Poppy know that he could let go at any time.
It was horrifying... The little boy from Poppy's class had turned into this... Monster.
"What do you mean? I had assumed we were all going together..." Poppy played it off perfectly, something beyond the comprehension of this horny fool's mind.
"Oh no, Kaylynn made it clear that we had to go in pairs..." Equan lied... Grinning ear to ear as Poppy actually fell for it.
"Like a date?" Poppy asked, tilting her head as her cheeks flushes as red as her eyes.
"Yeah with Chase... You and him... Watching fireworks together..." Equan was nearly about to burst out into a fit of villainous laughter when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
"You're so stupid..." Poppy chuckled, watching from below as Equan was launched into nearby remains of a tree by her poltergeist.