23

O(I)O(I)

Genos was saddened by how his "master" suddenly vanished just when he came back. Things did not get better for him, but he wasn't the one who was in trouble. The elf passed out on the streets and he had to carry her to the hospital.

He was now standing behind a window with a transparent view of the elf in a deep sleep. While he was standing here waiting for the doctor to come back with a printout of her X-ray's, she was mumbling stuff in her sleep. Being in a hospital obviated how this world just wasn't a good place for her.

At last the doctor arrived and he called out to Genos in a muffed way.

"Get over here. Please, come look at your daughter's X-ray's."

Saying she was his daughter was the only way he would be allowed to stay much like how you can visit someone longer if you say your a healthcare worker. Genos followed him to a small room, dark except for a light on a board with dozens of pictures of brains on them.

Most were identical except for one with a circle around a section of the frontal lobe called the hypothalamus.

Genos already got the gist of what was happening thanks to his mechanical eyes zooming in on the sheet of paper on the doctors' clipboard: she had a swollen hypothalamus; the part of her that controlled her emotions was acting peculiarly.

"Is there anyone else to call before we try any surgery on her?" The doctor asked the cyborg.

Genos was making a risky decision, but it was the only one he knew couldn't fail.

"Let's wait a bit and see if a man named Saitama comes here with something to share about her condition."

The doctor raised an eyebrow as his eyes drifted from the scan to the bright yellow eyes of the S-Class hero cyborg.

"Unless Saitama is a surgeon that specializes in the limbic systems and can colloquially repair her brain with his medical expertise, I think you should just let the staff here decide the best course of action for her for you."

O(I)O(I)

Lumina was gliding over the trees while the wind was blowing into her tightly squeezed shoes. She was getting close to her father.

She could almost hope he was back to his old self right now; maybe even waiting for her to come and take him home.

She noticed something else while she was atop of the trees, a big shiny opal speeding along through the golden forest in the eye of her filigree.

She didn't bother to look at the object away from it; at this time of the day all she could see was the moon shining its purple light down and that only shrouded more than hiding in a bush.

The thoughts of something moving so fast dissipated from her mind when she reached the location of cobbled onyx and one glimmering red heart, the nestling place her father was in.

Before she could even think about going into the cave...

She waited...

She did the adorable thing of intertwining her fingers while sprinkling a little luminating dust off the inside of her cubicles...

And then—she used her magic to form a giant green semi-cocoon around the entrance of the cave. The bald man with the yellow outfit came speeding towards the cave before coming to a grazing stop.

"This matter is for me and my father—I don't know you and neither does he. Would you please just return to your allies and finish your quest in your own stead?"

He just looked at her with a face a girl wouldn't find very attractive (her included) before he turned around and ran away from her barrier.

Now that she was sure she was alone, She walked into the cave where a waft of something akin to the wax adhesives seeped in her nose. The inside was well lit with green emeralds protruding from carved holes in the walls.

It was a good thing she could see or else she would tumble, and even having powers of levitation couldn't save her when there was multiple spider webs stinking to the walls in a visage of nets.

The fear of all these sticky webs wasn't the thought there might be a giant spider—maybe even a Hemphoria in these cave walls—it was how she was suppose to find her father now.

With a little levitation cast by coating herself in blue light, she descended down to the depths of the giant pit that was the cave. With her thumb out and a little light she could see everything that encircled her, the holes she assumed spiders would come out, the spiral of flat rocks gapped so far apart it was more a leap of faith than any stairs, and of course she saw a few pieces of gold dropped from earlier traveler's.

An idea came to her seeing all this gold: 'What if some of this stuff is my father's?'

She wriggled her fingers as if she was strewing lines for calligraphy sprinkling a blue mist all over her crown. The crown was made from the same goldsmith that created all the other trinkets she and her father carried around with them at all times—if any of these jewels were his than they would also glister blue.

Her blue spores latched onto a gold brooch near a non-glowing crystal flower. Lumina ascended to the level of the brooch before grabbing it and examining it. She could tell this was her father's from how the shank sides were engraved with her mother's name.

'Good. I found something personal to my father. Now I just need to give it back with him with a little...'

She wondered why she was thinking all this when she could just be doing it. With a little blue liquid she poured it all over the gold brooch. It took awhile of uneventfulness—the brooch had to absorb the liquid and everything if she was going to let it fly away freely.

The brooch finally moved animatedly around in circles before whooshing down the hole towards another hole those spiders would crawl from.

She crawled through the hole that led her down a long maze that felt like something out of a nightmare, especially with all the past smells of spiders that crawled through this very hole.

At the end of the "tunnel" was light—bright shining light and a few flashes of lightning filling the room. Not only did the lightning create flashes, it fulgurate some living organisms into burned splotches. It didn't take long for Lumina to find out she was in a nesting room; in the middle was a big cocoon with sharp strands holding the cocoon in place.

And in that very same room, on a tall rock standing tall and robust, was her father clenching a lightning bolt in his free hand.

Just like that, she went from analyzing to feeling the tension of what he might do with that lightning bolt. Even with a little swirls in her head causing her eyebrows to be inflamed in anxiety, she flew to the spot he was standing on, being at the pinnacle of his magic.

By the time she was close to him, he had two long lightning imbued lance probes on the left and right of the cocoon ready to pierce through it in its midsection.

"You think I would let you bring an abomination to my home again?" Her father asked no one, his eyes weren't even dilating with her around. "You have another thing coming, bro-"

"Dad."

...

"ther..."

It seemed he was unfettered by her trying to reach out to him. But things didn't go a different direction; the position of the arrows turned towards her.

"Dad, it's okay. It's me, your daughter. Even if you don't remember me I'm sure you can remember your own morals about hurting a young girl like me. So please, dad, just stop all this and let's simmer down and talk."

To even her surprise her sentimentality actual came through to him. The arrows were still floating around in the corners but were aimed at the ground instead of at them; the father and the daughter.

The simultaneous, adjacent arrows went from looming to just an opposite of a threat, and then she heard a loud noise climbing up the rocks.

All the clues to what was heading this way was in the giant cocoon in the center, a Hemphoria.

And Hemphoria it was, a queen of a spiders nest.

Her body was the width of a Minotaur's stature and big as five carriage's tossed into one pile. It's fur was brown with black stripes strewn all over its back; fresh black lines from tar in a very morass underground.

Not only did it have eight furry legs except its spider skin black stingers at the bottom and six green eyes, but four additional tentacles squirming around ready to sting an unfortunate prey.

'Why me?' Lumina wondered staring at its gigantic form. 'I never hurt any of her children, even stopped my dad from killing her unhatched children. Why is she coming after me?'

Lumina only had one chance—to survive not to actually fight against this monster.

O(I)O(I)

Pief and Lenise went four minutes without bickering or fighting each other and that helped them actually find the cave the rapacious sister wanted to be.

Pief was angry. She couldn't be more enraged with her sister if she had a piece of glass struck in her eyes after a long meeting with gluttonous adventurers. She was angry enough to get hands on with her, but that thought left her head the moment a yellow blur sped past her.

Pief was interested in finding out what Saitama was running towards, especially when just ahead he was going into a giant barrier. He collided with the barrier as the wall shattered, not even slowing down his accelerated speed.

What was weirder than the speed he moved was how Lenise reacted to it.

"Men with capes just want to run around being fools."

"Maybe you want to rip his cape off and wear it yourself."

Lenise twitched her eye at her. "Did you really compare me to a fangirl?"

Neither of the sisters said another word when they entered the cave and got a waft of the cold air with glowing emeralds in their eyes.

The first thing that came to Lenise's mind was the last time she had to wear emeralds. It was in her first year of being a singer. Some have it rough on their first years as singers, but Lenise's was easy; mostly because she had support, especially from her once supportive sister.

When they reached the bottomless pit with webs and floating rocks, Pief slipped out her garrote made with rope as the line and knives for the handles.

She needed two of them for the venture of going down the pit. Once she had the ropes entangled, the knifes jittering in the air, she threw them both down. At first it seemed like she was carelessly throwing her weapon away, but the knives simultaneously stuck to a coalesce of rock keeping the ropes positioned as two tallies crossed.

Creating the trapeze tool was the easy part; having her and her sister land on it at the same time was going to be the hard part. She was going to have to convince Lenise to jump with her at the same time on the ropes, but knowing Lenise she would have some objections to doing that.

'If I have no choice of being here she should have no choice on this matter.' Pief touched, Lenise flinched. "We need to jump; please don't argue with me about it."