Alfia and Materia were both beautiful without a doubt. Despite Materia being slightly thin and waifish with her delicate beauty. There was no comparison the two of them were by all accounts hot as all hell. Though Alfia's slight glare at my appraising eyes didn't go unnoticed.
So thankfully I knew what issues they had, in basically magical lung and heart cancer, so I could play to diagnosing their issues.
"Hello, it's good to see you again Materia, and you are her sister Alfia. My name is Jake Barris" I greeted them.
Materia smiled and spoke gently. "Hello Jake, I am sorry for bringing you trouble, and I appreciate any help you can give the both of us."
I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow as I realized how pure her voice was in her heartfelt apology for bringing me and Tina into the Hera Familia so gracelessly so I inclined my head to her in acceptance of an apology.
Then Alfia spoke and her voice although smooth and clear, was devoid of emotions and I could tell she was just going through the motions. She had already given up hope for curing her issues along with her sisters. "Do what you must so we can get our lives on."
I didn't snark at Alfia, as I knew her life had been painful and with that being an understatement as with each breath she and her sister taking being painful. She also had that belief that she stole all her sister's talent in the womb so she felt guilty about that as well, she was just kinda fucked in the head, and living in this might make right times of Orario probably didn't help either.
Either way I cleared my throat and then explained what I was going to do. "Alright, I am going to listen to your breath's Alfia, Materia, from your's backs along with counting your heartbeats with my hand on your backs." I said soothingly and Alfia raised an eyebrow and snarked.
"You arent going to try to count our heart beats from the front?"
I couldn't help a snort and I said flatly. "No Alfia... Your massive tits are in the way. And I like my head screwed on where it is."
Materia giggled and flushed at my crass words as Tina's face palmed while sitting on a bench across the room, and Alfia? Her eye's tightened on my form and for a moment I felt magical energy fill the room before Materia turned to her sister and made a throat-clearing noise and Alfia just settled on glaring on me.
But as I turned to speak to Materia and have the back of her button-up dress opened, I saw out of the corner of my eye. Alfia hefted up her breasts as though sizing them up and making sure they weren't in fact overly sized.
"Alright Materia, I am going to rest my ear on your back and I am going to listen to your breaths and count your heartbeats." I said soothingly and she nodded with a small flush coming to her face as I placed my ear on her smooth back and as I pressed my ear to her back I placed a hand over my other ear I calmed my mind so I could use my adventurer boosted senses to listen to her breathes and heartbeat.
And within moments I could tell. I whispered softly. "Materia, take a couple deeper breaths for me." And as she did so, I could hear her lungs expand and weight within and spilling outside the lungs moving and clapping against the membrane within the lungs and even as Materia coughed at the cancerous growth within her lungs hitting the lungs and obviously causing some pain, I listened to her heartbeat also rise in speed and have a sort of rhythmic smacking against it.
I got it. I could imagine her body from the inside and atop the lung and between it, and the heart was a growth or tumor that had grown into the lungs and was hurting her heart as well.
"Alright, Materia thank you for that," I said softly as I pulled back slightly and she nodded with a small blush still on her cheeks at my close contact with her... Honestly, with how protective the Hera Familia was over her, I wouldn't be surprised if this is some of the closest contact she has had with a man.
Either way, I looked over to Alfia and I realized her dress was already completely backless so as I wrote down the number of heartbeats I counted from Materia just as proof of my taking of notes, I spoke aloud. "Gawain could you get one of those sterile vials used for potions and fill the bottom with Materia's blood." As the girls glared at me I continued consolingly.
"Her blood is weak, I need to have it for tests to see the strength of medicine her body can carry, along with testing for reactions and making the medicine itself tie into her body all the more affective as it will be completely attuned to her." I explained and Alfia grimaced before looking to Gawain and saying with a scowl.
"He is right... He is talking akin to the black magic that the southern swamp dwellers use that has connecting things pull magic together and target things more precisely then other magic styles tend to do." Alfia said grudgingly and then helped Materia prick a vein and draw out a good bit of blood that filled up the vial before capping it and slathering some giving a potion to Materia to drink along with pouring some on the little bleeding hole she poked into her arm.
"Alright Alfia, now its your turn." I said and she nodded and as I sat behind across from her so I could lay my head against her back to kind of mentally map out her body's internal structure with my advanced senses.
I could hear Alfia mutter with a wry sigh. "It's a pleasant change from some perverted hack who 'needed' us to strip to take our body temperature from our 'core'."
And how come I could see Apollo pulling that kind of bullshit? Maybe that incident was why he wasn't relevant until after Hera and Zeus fell. He was actually literally in hiding... Now that would be funny.
Either way, I did the same asking her to take a deep breath, and then as she did so I got a sense of how her body was working, sure this little method wouldn't work if her liver wasn't working but when a big flesh sack that didn't fit in the body literally was slapping around inside the body in complete difference to the bodies natural functions it made it easy to pick out. Alfia's cancer/tumor however seemed to be more focused around her heart instead of her lungs unlike Materia and was in fact a good deal smaller and less intrusive.
With that done. I popped off with a smile and I knew what I had to do. See although magical cancer was in fact terrible and cancer itself was terrible but there were workarounds even if I couldn't just hack her open and then surgically remove the cancer and just use a fuck load of elixer's and such to regrow the lost sections of the body.
But there were workarounds to dealing with cancer then stupidly dangerous chemicals that would rot the body from the inside to kill the cancer. And with my fusion ability, I was sure I could come up with something, especially with literal blood vials from them to target their particular forms of cancer.
So once I finished filling out my little note pad I spoke up. "Alright seeing as Materia is the cutest, I will be working on her cure first especially as her issues are a lot more apparent and more time-sensitive." I spoke as I moved over to Tina and helped her off the tall chair while she re-took her spear that was comically too small in Gawain's hands. "Gawain, will you please escort us out of the compound as I can already feel Alfia is uncomfortable with me touching her like that and is considering where to hide my body," I said with some humor and the aforementioned Silence rolled her eyes.
But there was no missing the slight mischief in her eyes as she drawled. "No... I believe I will wait to see if your claims of curing my sister will hold value. So you get to live another day Jake Barriss."
I just flatly retorted as I pulled Tina out of the room. "Yeah well I would rather marry your sister." Then slammed the door shut as I picked up Tina and then Gawain picked us both up as she heroically charged and literally lept out of a window leading us to fall down from the second-floor window we were in.
Then a whisper hit our ears. "Lugio." And the entire back wall of the Hera castle exploded toward us but thankfully Gawain had put the pedal to the metal and was spitting curses at me and laughing all the same as she charged out of the Hera Familia with us in tow.