15

O(I)O(I)

What they don't tell you about being in a place completely white is how it's missing the thing that makes a room stable like floors. Saitama also waded through what felt like two buildings so close together only a tiny gap was between them. He did all this uncomfortable things just so he could walk up and talk to the young girl.

"So...she was recently swallowed before I came here? She's still inside the snake? Are you still alive inside the snake? Why are you showing me all of this?" He asked.

She was quite for close to a minute, maybe forty-seconds, before she begun to speak again.

"My friend isn't trapped inside that snake...she is a giant snake, her soul is what's trapped in it."

It was at that moment a flood of brown water outpoured through the whole room; it was after the water splashed against Saitama and moved all over the room did he start to get a scene, and that scene was Eilho once again facing the snake.

Her hair and size didn't change much since the last time he saw her but she had a few new choice of wardrobe. She wore a bracelet on her right arm with gold curlicues, had two derringers on her sides instead of one behind her back holstered by a thin brown belt, had a conical helmet over her face with red hair spilling out of the bottom, bronze chainmail, and a skirt made out of an ermine.

She and the snake were clashing, it snapping its neck to swallow her whole but whipping its neck left to veer away when she nearly cut its head off with her newly furbished, glinting like a star polished broadsword shimmering in the darkness, double edged and pommel looked like an ivory oval.

While she was clashing the tiny snakes were slithering up behind her. Every flitting second for her seemed to be used parrying with the giant snake until they jumped, she jumped nine feet in the air and unhoistered her derringers. With quick shooting and pinpoint accuracy she shot an onslaught of deadly shots, each one going right into the necks of the snakes, and landing on her feet.

Now that she was on her feet, she was simply standing all pantomimed and still. She was waiting for the snake to once again come at her, and it did come at her...

The snake came and drove past her scrapping her forearm with the tip of its fangs on the way.

She was now poisoned and couldn't suck it out—her only salvation was pulling out a tonic from the fur fold of her skirt and chugging it down.

While the snake was veering left circling back to plow through her the same way it did with Saitama she put her arm in her skirt and started fumbling around trying to find something, but it just wasn't there, that made her stressed and irked her to the point she wanted to scream.

So, she did scream, and while screaming the ground around her rippled with hot air and that air wafted through the room before exploding in a giant ball of air that pushed the snake into the wall behind the trees.

And then—Eilho started to change; morph from her human form into a completely different species. Her two legs were now adhesively sticking together until they became one straight unbent leg, her arms turned into arrowhead-esque tendrils multiplying until they were a dozen on each side of her body positioned far enough apart, and her eyes turned purely blue in the sclera's with a long slit engrossed her now blue eyes, her lips looked the opposite color appearing to be her skin, and her whole body turned purple. She had in abject fear turned herself into a giant snake; a mirror reflection of the snake that devoured her friend.

She was just upright staring with eyes that lacked anger or happiness or even concern which was more common in reptiles than other males who at least resembled some emotions with their eyes, but like ants snakes lacked empathy. She was like that until the other snake slithered its way back towards her with a gash on its right side from plowing right into a sconce. She kept her body upright but now slumped down on the ground until her underbelly was touching the grass.

Then—both snakes moved at the speed of rockets ready to attack! They got close, hissed their fangs at each other simultaneously, than coiled together snapping their fangs into each others' necks. The orange snake was biting higher up the neck but it was Eilho's fangs that made it writhe in agony!

To Saitama it seemed this fight would only end when one of the snake's lost its head, and from the look of it they were thrashing each other around, pushing themselves against the trees and walls, rolling around in the dirt all while looking for the opportunity to bite at each other's necks, the opportunities mostly coming for Eilho.

By the end both snakes had gashes, cuts, were covered in dirt, and they were both taking deep breathes showing they were tired. It was a long winding battle, however, it would only end when one of them had been killed. It was Eilho who moved towards the orange snake, raised her tail up so she daunted him as a looming danger, a harbinger of snake-death, then took one big bite at her neck until its very head, decapicated, lopped off its long body and fell into the trees; probably why Saitama didn't find its body earlier.

Usually when a fight was over there would be applause from someone, being a hero there would be applause just for Genos and Amai Mask showing up, but for Eilho all it had was time spent alone.

It seemed Saitama was also alone as well since all had got to see for what seemed like hours was Eilho as a giant snake inclining its head in different directions, twitching its nostrils, sleeping in a curled ball, prying its mouth through the ground looking for something to eat, and most of all the other snakes slithering around over on top of her while she was slumbering for what seemed like hibernation.

She had lost all sense of who she was and just lived as the very boss she worked so hard to kill, then, the vision showed the moment Saitama opened the door and walked inside, its eyes started to flare and it opened its mouth...

That's when the vision faded and Saitama was back in the white room; the girl's voice behind him.

"I'm sorry." She said.

"It's okay, I didn't know she used to be hu—"

"That's not what I'm sorry for. I have been using my powers to make you think you were actually hurt. Now you have been weakened. I am using your power to go back against my friend, try to end her painful existence myself, and then I will let you end mine—she and I will finally get to spend our lives together again."

She made absolutely no sense to him until he was returned to his reality: being encumbered by a snake with tendrils, in a boss room in a world where fantasy and being an RPG character was real. The big snake salivated, its reptile spittle splattering the ground with messy green secretions, from its mouth about to devour Saitama, when suddenly it cried in pain and roared to the ceiling for some unknown reason; until a large lump started to grow out the side of its face.

The lump peeled off and went FLOOM! on the floor. At first it just looked like a normal white bulbous ball until it flew for ten seconds off the ground going nearly two feet, and did it again this time a tail appendage growing from its backside.

At first that bulbous entity just looked like MashMan( an arcade character in Saitama's world) with a tail until two small nautilus blue eyes sprouted followed by two very small slit nostrils. It's frame grew longer, wider, developing more tendrils on its body's sides, its white scales glistening with blue gems that embedded itself on its ridge, and it soon stood eighteen feet tall with four small metal stubs protruding from its forehead. It was a giant snake in a tiny boss room just like its predecessors.

While Saitama was staring four snakes leapt at him and bit him in the face, however, this time their fangs didn't even leave a nipping mark on his face. He swat them away unintentionally squishing them causing their venom juices to leave a giant swathe on the ground.

Saitama looked up with the apparent hissing sounds reverberating through the room getting his uninterested attention. The giant snakes hissed, swayed left and right as if they were belly dancers who mimicked their dances in-turn after snakes, awaited the moment they would fight happening very soo—

"Down here!" Saitama called.

The "sisters" coiled their long tails to see why the caped baldy was speaking to him. He looked at them with his tiny little eyes before twiddling his fingers urging them to come closer. As they inclined their faces closer they tasted his rubbery suit with their tongues, tasted a little dirty. Finally they got to see why the man called them to him—so he could punch them both in the face at the same time!

Both of them went flying through the air and went skyrocketing into the sky, crashing through the walls of the ceiling like they were made out of paper. They were soon far away from the very room they were trapped in; the only clue they were actually there were the two two sets of fangs laying sideways on the grass, a little of them gums still attached to the bottom squirting dark purple from one tiny hole in both of them.

Not only were the big snakes gone but the smaller snakes seemed to have left the area, they slithered to burrows made for emergencies like this. Saitama felt nothing after knocking them into the sky except he was blinded for a second by a ray of sun cascading into his right eye.

"Just one punch...?" He looked down, turned around a few times seeing the bottom, middle, and upper parts of the room looking for anything...anything to add more excitement to this quest. In the end, he shrugged. "Guess I'll just make sure Clive doesn't do any more quests from now on then find a hotel to sleep in. Maybe someday I'll at least find a friend here to spend my free time with."