22

O(I)O(I)

The woods is calm, a quiet air, an overture before what happens. Monsters and beasts suddenly come out, your surrounded, you heard there were monsters in the forest so your not foolish enough to walk in without a short sword or a bow and arrow and leap into action to use them—the monsters have big arms, fast legs or sharp jaws to fight you with.

You've fought valiantly only to lose an arm or a leg or to be cut in a way that leads to you eventually bleeding out and falling face first into the mucky water. Most beasts would maw through the bodies and devour your flesh after you've been killed by them, but before they can a green hand from a body made entirely out of water reaches in and takes you down, down to the swamp where you slowly fade from a silhouette to complete darkness.

Your body decays from being in the water only to congeal into something else, but before transforming your put into the body of a different entity, its exoskeleton completely green with sand at the bottom and glowing with refulgent eerie red eyes, has at first only two big hands but with the bones its accumulated over the course of its life it could grow more; not that it needs to grow more when it was three times the height of a stoic Viking and twice the strength of a minotaur.

Following Lenisa's directions, the trio were led right to that very spot where the swamp monster rose from the murky water and towered over them. It rose until the trilling sound of rustling leaves was next to its ears, cocked its arm-esque appendage back, and went right for Saitama with a right hook...

Saitama extended his arm lethargically and managed to hit him in the face at a reach that didn't seem possible from how well the swamp monster could extend its appendages. But when his fist connected with the swamp monster, the top half of its body was punched through leaving a sheet of dirty water before toppling down, dead.

Pief was completely flabbergasted while Lenisa was waving a fan on her face.

"I really need to have another talk with the guildmaster about his advancement into next rank." Pief admitted.

"Ah being an adventurer, where you start off with a third place title in a songstress competition only to have to climb forty-nine ladders to reach the highest medal." Lenisa said with a smirk on her face.

Saitama walked out of the swamp, his eyes buggy and his cape just stiff as a board, and then he dashed around the swamp like a projectile.

'I wonder how mad they'll be when I leave them alone to find a puddle of clean water to rinse this gunk off.' Saitama thought while running around. 'My dad yelled at me living rent free when I took a five minute break after raking leaves for two hours.'

He ran around in a circle to find water, and the more he ran around the wider the radius of his circle became. He couldn't spot water, only monsters that ranged from big and burly to quadruple and sharp tooth, all jumping out of the way in reverent fright.

These animals were afraid, but there was something queer that happened while he was running. Just when he thought he could smell something that could be hot water in a hot spring, an axe was lobbed towards him, and he managed to sink back and let the axe hit a tree.

The tree was big and strong, maybe over seventy-five years old and deep rooted, and that mattered because the axe thrown at him toppled the tree the same way Saitama's punches toppled the swamp monster, pushing it aback until every root was pulled out.

Saitama knew someone was here to fight him—and he didn't waste any time letting himself be known.

In the direction where a wild battle cry rang towards him and even bounced off the big cromlech made to look like a churro reverberating back into his ears.

The one audacious enough to do this was a middle aged man with blonde hair not wearing a shirt, just his long expensive looking jeans which had tears in them.

Saitama didn't know how to respond to this encounter; he just had a soft spot of going easy on humans over monsters.

The blonde lunatic made the first move jumping up high, a jump of great vigor but nothing a B class hero couldn't do. With his bare knuckles he punched the ground, but he punched the ground ten feet away from where Saitama was standing.

Something did happen when he hit the ground, though. His right shoulder glowered with a sigil engraving itself with white light. If Saitama's fifth grade art class told him anything the symbol was made with four small lines, four longer lines, and a tiny circle.

Put them all together and you get an hourglass with two lightning bolt eyebrows and maybe the moon over it.

Saitama made the mistake of looking at the man instead of the sky; his teachers mock his intelligence but at least eye contact wasn't his inadequacies.

The answer became clear: he was a lightning mage trying to strike him down with a lightning bolt, however, the first lightning bolt that came down hit a tree two miles away from him, and Saitama wasn't even moving.

More lightning bolts started to come down, all descending like arrows falling from the sky, and all not even coming feet away from hitting Saitama.

Saitama was usually indifferent to what people used their powers/magic for, but this was just getting to be worse than if a god used their powers on innocent people.

"Sir, are you okay?" He asked.

The sigil in the man's arm disappeared as his eyes flashed like daggers while looking at Saitama's buggy eyes.

"Their going to take away my crown unless I find the beast of festering greed." He said in a very quiet, soft voice as if he was talking to a cat instead of a human being.

"I can dig that, but do you really need to...you know...bring out all this lightning?"

His behavior changed from soft speaking and confusing to virulent outburst.

"DO YOU THINK I CAN SNAP?!" His sigil glowed, but it was tinted red instead of the white from before. "SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!"

With a real snap not the "snap" he kept ranting about, a lightning bolt the size of a skyscraper and the bulk of three acres of land came down and hit Saitama where he stood, FINALLY.

The lightning bolt didn't hurt him, and for further proof the readers could always check the opening to the first season of One Punch Man, but it felt...different.

It felt like a snowflake fell from the sky and landed on his shoulders, frigid but also giving him a sort of warmth he hardly felt anymore. It also smelled like water, the same water he smelled when he ran around in circles.

It went without saying this was no ordinary lightning strike—did that mean this was no ordinary man?

The lightning ceased and Saitama looked at the bearded man's nose like any person trying to show he was giving his full attention listening and looking. He was trembling in a sheepish way.

"Please don't tell me your a lightning god like Odin or Zeus." Saitama said blatantly.

"Where's Lumina?" Saitama was surprised by this question; his reaction was to stare at him until he gave more of an explanation as to who or what this Lumina was. "My daughter...have you seen...I'd like a sundae with extra cranber...can someone please tell me why my son is marrying a girl from her culture?"

It was becoming clear that this man had a few screws lose. Saitama wouldn't have cared if he was just a homeless guy in the city or pretty much anyone incapable of unleashing ultimate attacks like him, but he was a danger to be around.

"Just stay where you are and I'll go get Plef to hel..."

With one little hop of his legs he vanished. What really happened was a beam of pink light shone down and touched him before he vanished from sight and reappeared from another beam of light further down the forest.

Saitama's right eyebrow twitched. He took a breath in, then exhaled.

With his feet he moved faster than fifty miles an hour through the forest trying to catch up with the blonde bearded man.

"Saitama! Saitammmma!"

Out from behind the cromlech came Pief.

Adjacent to her was her sister Lenisa. A person's character could be learned by how they react in dire situations, i.e. Saitama being gone for too long. Pief was calling his name trying to find him, a drop of cold sweat dripping from her nose from the horror of losing a guildmember while he was in her care—and Lenisa had a gold bracelet held to her right eye looking through it as if there was a lens, which in a way there was.

When Lenisa looked through the bracelet...everything appeared to be made of gold.

They were a different kind of filigree, dark gold, shiny yellow gold, and red gold some would say were rubies. She could see the cluster of squares made up to look like a squirrel, which Pief could also see with something her abnormity allowed her to do, see in the dark.

A deer passed by. It was dark gold, had a shiny gold smile on its face and a heart encrusted ruby heart.

And then—she saw an oval, square, eight long lines, half of them adjacent to one another...person running uphill.

"He's still running." She stated.

Despite that being the only tidbit of information Pief needed to hear, Lenisa continued to observe the golden sheen of shapes moving in an upward motion.

"He is a pretty good runner. Not my type in terms of looks, but you said he was a new recruit. Why isn't he above copper level?"

"He doesn't have any mag-"

"Excuse me."

Lenisa dropped her filigree from that distraction. Pief squeezed her shoulder and together they turned around to see who was speaking to their backs.

Pief couldn't believe her eyes.

The stranger was a young girl with pink hair, and she wasn't so much a "stranger" as she was:

"Princess Lumina?" The sisters asked in unison.

"Yes." She said nonchalantly. "Do I know either of you?"

"My name is Pie-"

"Wait, wait, wait." Lenisa interrupted her sister whom she nearly pushed out of the way to share the spotlight with Princess Lumina. "Surely you know who I am? I'm Lenisa of the Pink Ethereal. I sing music so uplifting it couldn't be better if an angel flew down and sang it themselves."

Lumina didn't give her the reaction she was used to getting, troubles of being born with a silver spoon only to meet someone whose spoon was literally made of gold.

"Sorry, that's not ringing any bells. As I was saying, how do you know my name?"

"Us? Everyone in Yakime's city knows his daughter Lumina. You wouldn't believe how many people show up asking to be adventurer's just so one day they could defeat the evil Niaz Aaol Gown and have you be their future bride."

Lumina at first stared blankly at her before she blew a raspberry and laughed wholeheartedly.

"I don't want to marry someone just because they defeated an evil god." She laughed a little longer as if she was a balloon expelling air, but the air stopped flowing out halfway from her while she still had a big, goofy smile on her face. "I'm not into princes or princesses, adventurers, and certainly not heroes...I just want someone I can cannot imagine myself living without."

She chuckled more mellow and weakly as if laughing now hurt-the air in the balloon empty. Now she looked stern and desperate for attention.

"I need help finding my father, your king if your really citizens of Yakime."

"Not me." Lenise announced. "I live life travelling the world. I stop by the smallest sprawl towns to the grandest kingdoms bringing joy to the girls who are always cheering, and cheering, and cheering...and always right in my ears and the men are always coming and going, and coming and going, and coming and going...and always too soon."

Pief was embarrassed at the way her sister flipped the table to talk about herself, as always.

Lumina was the one who decided to speak before Lenise brought in more antics.

"I see you have a looking-glass-filigree you dropped on the ground. Perhaps you can let me have it, not to keep but to see around the forest with."

With a snap of her fingers, Lumina went poof. The same sound she made when she did it was reverberating throughout the forest in different directions. Pief and Lenise just couldn't keep up with Lumina's teleportation. Pief thought if only she had Lumina's powers...she could have escaped to the guild years earlier than when she did, get far away from her greedy-selfish sister.

At last Lumina returned.

She looked sorrowful, desperate to find someone only to fail, but hope seemed to come through to her when Pief handed her Lenise's filigree.

That sad face turned into a big smile—in the end doing something good for someone in need was always something that feels good.

And a thought crackled in Pief's head 'Maybe when she finds her dad and we all go home, she'll invite me over to his castle for dinner sometime.'

"Thank you."

The moment Lumina's fingers touched the filigree she vanished from sight.

All that joy Pief felt helping the princess of her village had left her when Lenise flitted from being adjacent to her to being in front of her, and her eyes looked at her with bloodshot rage.

"Who gave you permission to give away my magical items? Do you know what I had to do to get it?"

Pief furrowed her eyes and wiggled her nose, her repressed anger just wanted to come out.

"Let me guess, you sat on a chair while a rich guy talked about his home, his dogs, his portraits and his many wives and thanked you for a nice night with it."

Lenise mimicked her sisters' actions taking a deep breath in and breathing out, again, and again. After she did her calming exercise and all was quiet in the Mystaria swamp, she kicked her sister in the knee.

Lenise had the advantage of knowing where to hurt Pief. Slapping her across the face would just enrage her beast self, but the pain in the knees she needed to walk on made her feel off balance than enraged. Pief fell on one knee, Lenise towering over her huffing with her hands on her hips.