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"Themi-chan! Kumo is a spider! Kumonosu is a spiderweb~!"

A second voice followed the first from somewhere down the street. The streetlights only provided just a little bit of light and the moon was covered by a thick blanket of clouds. One of the streetlights was in need of repair, flickering in a stereotypical sort of creepy way. It was under this flickering light that Lacrimosa hung unceremoniously stuck to a spiderweb.

Themisto didn't even notice her at first, despite her pink attire standing out very starkly in the darkness. He just hadn't bothered to scan. Itsuki, the Guardian Cat who hung in the folds of his fuku, alerted the senshi with frantic flailing.

"THEMI-CHAN! IT'S LACRI-SAN!! STUCK IN A KUMONOSU!!!"

The shrill shrieking grated on his ears. "Jesus Christ, Itsuki. You don't need to scream. I--" He stopped just a few feet away from where Lacrimosa hung and looked halfway between horrified and concerned for her wellbeing. "Christ on a cracker, lady, are you okay? ...s**t... how're we gonna get you down... Uh... hang on. Itsuki, you stay here. I'm gonna go see if I can find a stick or somethin'. If I try touchin' it, I'll get stuck. Maybe I can like... spaghetti this s**t and... just hang on!"

Itsuki was unceremoniously plopped onto the ground in a heap and Themisto shot of near the other trees to try and pull a branch down. "UWAH. Themi-chan, please, handle the nekos gently! Uff. Lacri-san, what happened? Daijoubu?"

"Ah! Lacri-san, I'm glad you're okay!"

Itsuki, without a moment's hesitation, flopped over onto his back to view Lacrimosa as if she were right-side-up. Thankfully she wasn't flashing passersby inappropriately. Little bean toes in the air, he wanted to keep an eye on the sakura senshi while waiting for his charge to return with a tool to help the situation. "Lacri-san, that was Themi-chan. He's a lot more work than you, that's for certain. I have to yell at him to patrol, and sometimes he's too busy at the convenience store or he's complaining about his pants..."

"I heard that, you little furry---"

Themisto had returned with a rather thick branch he'd managed to find dangling from another tree. It had cracked during a previous intense windstorm, and he felt lucky to find it. "Talkin' s**t about me, Itsuki? Tryin'a flirt with damsels in distress? That's messed up."

Walking up to the spiderweb, Themisto stabbed the sticky threads and started to pull, twisting them up on the branch. He'd hoped to grab as much of it as he could before trying to wipe them on the ground and repeat the process. Itsuki made a face from behind him.

"I was going to saaaay, Themi-chan, that you're also very strong and capable and you're getting better with your patrols. You don't give me enough credit. Besides, Lacri-san is a person, and I haven't gotten human form yet, so I can't possibly flirt with her. So there."

Halfway through his work, Themisto stopped for a moment. "Hold up. Human form?"

"Oh, so that's a thing? Human form is a real thing and... jesus, you know what this means?" Another round of webbing had been strung around the branch and wiped off on the damp grass. Lacrimosa was beginning to drift lower to the ground every few moments while Themisto worked on the web. It strings were thick and sticky, which made working difficult. He had to make sure no part of himself or his fuku became entangled or he risked getting just as stuck as Lacrimosa. "...this means they'll open doors and use phones and order pizza and then make you pay for it."

"And open tuna caaaans~" came a cry from Itsuki, who remained on his back to keep an eye on Lacrimosa. Indeed, she was slowly drifting down to the ground. The web itself stretched between two thick trees, so the size of the spider that must have made this...

Themisto chuckled at the compliment to his pants. "Ya think so? Me, I'm like more... MC Hammer than somethin' super cool, I guess. Sure as s**t beats the raggedy shorts I had before. I mean, you'n'me are kinda dressed... sorta similar, I guess. I had a pair of these boards - geta? - those suck, by the way."

Itsuki's eyes went wide suddenly and he was uncharacteristically quiet. There was a distinctive scritch scritching sound coming from somewhere behind Lacrimosa, though the two senshi seemed caught up in conversation instead of keeping watch. The cat's ears flattened when eight bulbous and luminous red eyes opened, each one the size of the Guardian Cat. "KUMO!! THEMI-CHAN, KUMO!!!"

SKREEE!!!

“You know, if you weren’t stuck all up in this, and I didn’t have these I don’t even know what they’re called boots, I’d try to do the crab-walk thing MC Hammer does, but… I mean, I nearly broke my ankles off in six places with the geta. I guess I don’t wanna push my luck, you know?” Another tug of the branch and the webbing, wrapped like cotton candy around the end of the stick, was wiped away. The stuff was so sticky and gross. Themisto considered himself somewhat of a manly-man, one that wasn’t easily frightened by giant rats or spiders or centipedes. They were creepy, sure, but he, as a man, had a job to do - squish stuff on behalf of ladies who were allowed, socially, to be creeped out.

As soon as the red eyes opened and this hissing-screech reached his ears, Themisto outright panicked. This was the single largest, most disgusting spider he’d ever seen ever. Without the legs, the body itself was the size of a small sedan and its long, spindly legs did not seem strong enough to support such a weight. However it kept aloft, it was exponentially more creepy by the illogical nature of its build. It must’ve been a youma and it was intent on devouring Lacrimosa as a delicious sakura snack. Without thinking any further, and with Lacrimosa only half-freed from her sticky bonds, Themisto wrapped his arms around her and pulled, trying to gain traction on the damp earth to keep her away from the monster.

“NOPENOPENOPE---” the super senshi muttered. The two senshi went tumbling to the ground, half-covered in webbing and dirt as the spider covered a great distance to get closer to its delicious pink meal. Was this how they died? Holy hell, this was a terrible way to go!

Did spiders even care about feeling bad?? “I hope you’ve got some pink lasers or somethin’, Lacrimosa. I got like… feel bad ghoulies but… I don’t think spiders give a s**t!”

The Guardian Cat had righted himself and jumped onto Themisto’s shoulder, tiny claws gripping the fabric to keep himself stable. Despite Themisto attempting to keep himself between the spider and Lacrimosa and being prone on the ground, using his elbows and feet to keep backing up, Itsuki decided now was the best time to test out something he’d never done before.

“NEKO BEEMU!”

From the lilac star upon his forehead, a brilliant purple light shined briefly and a beam of pure energy collided with the spider’s face. It shrieked and sputtered, many legs scrambling to back up a few yards and its mandibles were tucked over its delicate eyes. Itsuki seemed quite proud of himself, though winded and spent from the energy required. “....fuuu…. Lacri-san, tasukete!”

Those spindly, black and shiny legs were drawing ever closer to the trio. The stun from Itsuki's star-beam was temporary at best, and while the spider-youma's eyes seemed dimmer, it was still moving at an alarmingly rapid rate. It was hungry, and now it was mad.

The sakura storm took the creature completely by surprise, and another high-pitched SKREEEE!!! was emitted as fragrant cherry blossoms filled its vision. Themisto and Itsuki seemed enraptured by the attack and watched in awe as hundreds of tiny petals stuck to the youma's multitudinous eyes. Taking several shaky steps backward on spindly legs, the spider youma started to claw at its face to remove the petals, mandibles dripping what appeared to be yellowish, thick fluid. Venom, most likely, thought Themisto with a shiver.

Now wasn't the time to let Lacrimosa do all the work. Themisto scrambled to his feet after setting a floppy Guardian Cat on the ground. All that energy for the beam really exhausted the poor thing and he lay in a furry heap on the ground. Nearly tripping over himself, Themisto made to grab for the branch he'd been using to pull some of the webbing apart. It was thicker, about two inches in diameter and about as long as his arm. The Super Senshi never considered himself a great player of baseball, but now was a good time to start practicing.

Themisto aimed for the spindly legs first, hoping to immobilize the thing. With a sickening CRACK, the first of eight legs was snapped off at the second joint. Oh my god, this is so nasty...

He had to keep that thought to himself, though. He had one pseudo-damsel and a fluffpile to save. ....sort of.

The petals seemed to be doing an excellent job of keeping the spider blinded - at least temporarily. It was excellent motivation to keep wailing away at the thing, hacking off two more of its legs while Itsuki was too exhausted to move. When Lacrimosa returned and pitched in, the two combined Super Senshi's efforts would render the spider pulverized just in the nick of time. As the spider let out its final cry, the sakura petals adhered to its many eyes began to fade away like so much dust.

All said and done, if the youma corpse hadn't begun to disintegrate into ash, the carnage left behind would be horrifying to anyone passing by. That was one blessing about youma - they didn't leave much evidence behind. Themisto heaved a huge sigh of relief and dropped to his backside to catch his breath and check on the cat and his fellow Senshi.

"You... You okay, Lacrimosa?" he asked, voice shaky despite all the attempts to seem cool as a cucumber. Giant spiders were scary no matter who you were. "Itsuki? You hangin' in there?"

The cat rolled over in response, eyes swirling. "Fuu... I've never... done the neko beam before... fuu... it's... very draining... wheeze." Fluffy fur and grass mixed as Itsuki tried to rest enough to at least stand and be easier to carry. "I read about it on the Headquarters Computer... fuu... but... the file didn't say how... exhausting it is." The little lilac-point managed to shift himself just enough to see Lacrimosa, the sakura senshi who had saved them with her quick thinking. "Lacri-san~ Fuu... you did great! Yoku yatta~"

"What he said." Themisto jerked a thumb in the feline's direction. "Way to be a badass, Lacrimosa."

"Glad they did. Spider was too busy tryin' to wipe 'em off to really deal with us. Good thinkin'. I don't think my attack would'a done anything, honestly. If Itsuki can upgrade people and give 'em new phones, maybe he can change our attacks to be something better. You know, like lasers or somethin'. Whatcha think, lil dude?"

"Fuuu..." came the wheezed reply, Itsuki appreciating being snuggled so gently against Lacrimosa. "I can't change your attacks into something else. Gomen, Themi-chan." The little cat's ears drooped from disappointing the other senshi. Someday in the future, when they were both Eternal Senshi, perhaps then they would have attacks that could do more damage. Itsuki would never know until that moment in time.

Heap on that guilt.

Themisto sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, looking away from the two of them.

"...well, I'm glad we're all okay. Your beam was pretty cool, Itsuki. Thanks for lookin' out for us." Themisto drew up his knees and leaned on them with his elbows. The two senshi were covered in sticky webs and grassy dirt, thanking their lucky stars that all three had survived. It truly was a blessing that Lacrimosa hadn't been devoured and no one was seriously injured. "...I dunno about you, Lacrimosa, but I could really use a hot meal after all this nonsense. My treat?"