CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

First Meeting of the Brave and the Bold, Part 1

It was just Sam’s luck that he was face to face with one of his idols and the hero was about to beat him up because of a misunderstanding.

“W-wait—”

Sam barely got the word out before Crow-Man socked him on the nose with a gloved fist. The punch caused the back of Sam’s head to whip back and smack hard on the cement floor.

WARNING! Your body has accumulated too much damage. Refrain from injuring yourself further while [Regeneration (ζ)] works to heal your injuries.

That was an impossible request, Sam thought, as the pair of strikingly bright violet eyes behind Crow-Man’s cowl was currently staring daggers at Sam. He’d also pulled his fist back for another punch.

What the hell are you doing, lame-brain!? Hit him back already!

It was a fairly reasonable suggestion, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to hit Crow-Man, the only delta-level hero to ever break into the national charts’ top one-hundred-ranked heroes—at least not until he’d tried to reason with him first.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like Crow-Man was in the mood to listen because no sooner had Sam said, “Stop,” when he got another helping of a fist to his face. This second punch hit him in the jaw, causing Sam’s vision to flicker while his brain got rocked inside his skull.

Crow-Man grabbed Sam by the collar and raised his head up to within inches of his cowl. The lower half of his face, which was the only part of him that wasn't covered, showed off chocolate-colored skin, a chiseled jaw, and gritted white teeth.

“Who are you? Why did you start the fire!?” Crow-Man asked in a low, rumbling voice. “Answer me!”

Sam would later say it was instinct and not a choice that drove him to finally fight back. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have started his counterattack with a head-butt.

He slammed his forehead against Crow-Man’s cowl, and despite how hard the feather-themed black material felt, the blunt force of Sam’s attack snapped Crow-Man’s head back long enough for Sam to slip his hand under his opponent’s thigh and push him off to the side.

Sam knew that he’d scored a lucky hit as Crow-Man was known to be an expert hand-to-hand fighter who’d once tied with Dragon Fist, the Master of the Martial Arts, in a fighting tournament, but sometimes luck won out over experience.

He scrambled to his feet, but Crow-Man kicked at the back of his knee, forcing Sam to stumble back to the roof floor.

Sam rolled to the side to avoid getting mounted on a second time. Then he lifted himself off the ground while raising his hands forward with palms open.

“Stop! I’m not a villain!” Sam yelled while sounding more like himself again. Perhaps the damage to his throat was finally healing. “I’m a…”

Maybe if he’d said hero things would have turned out differently, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to say that word yet. He still didn’t think he was ready for that mantle. Besides, his plea had come too late because Crow-Man had already launched a right-handed jab at Sam’s face.

Thanks to reflexes born from weeks of constant physical training, Sam managed to raise his arm in time to block the jab.

However, Sam wasn’t an experienced fighter which is why he didn’t catch the left-handed uppercut to the gut that followed the jab. The hit caused him to double over coughing, which put him in the right position for Crow-Man to knee him in the head.

In the back of his mind, while his head was knocked back, Sam couldn’t help but be impressed with Crow-Man’s hand-to-hand skills. The hero definitely lived up to the hype.

Another one of the master’s message boxes appeared floating in the air, but Sam didn’t have time to read what was most likely a reprimand of how poorly he was doing. He was too busy dodging the spinning heel kick that nearly tagged him in the neck.

Crow-Man’s barrage of attacks had driven him back toward the roof’s burned down entryway, Sam realized, for he could feel the intense heat behind him. The smoke around Sam was getting thicker and thicker too. It wouldn’t be long when even this roof would become a no man’s zone.

Even worse, Crow-Man’s dark-themed outfit—the cowl and cape of black feathers falling across a bodysuit that couldn’t hide the rippling muscles of a physically imposing man—made him hard to locate in this moonless night even with the aid of Sam’s new mask.

A fist flew toward Sam’s face, but instinct drove him to duck and then back away a good six feet away from his attacker.

Sam could tell from the glare sent his way that no amount of reasoning would make Crow-Man listen to him, at least not in this heated moment where life and death seemed to dangle by a thread. In his boots, Sam would have probably reacted the same way. After all, even without a mirror, Sam could tell he looked horrible, perhaps even monstrous. He certainly felt like it.

“One good smack to the head,” Sam reached behind him and pulled out Cranium Smasher from its strap on his belt, “and he might actually start listening…”

In response to Sam’s aggressive action, Crow-Man raised his fists like a boxer readying to charge forward.

They both moved, their feet sliding forward and placing them a step into each other’s range. However, just before either of them could launch their attacks, they both heard the popping sound of air heating up. It was quickly replaced by the explosion that caused the entire roof to shake.

An unfamiliar voice screaming into Sam’s ears accompanied this frightening sensation under his feet. What the hell are you doing, lame-brain! You’re not up here for a brawl! You’re here to rescue people, remember!?

Sam’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor because it was the first time he’d ever heard the master’s raspy, slightly high-pitch voice, although his surprise was quickly dampened by the screams of the mom and her two kids.

Interestingly enough, Crow-Man’s eyes reflected the panic in Sam’s own teal-colored irises.

“Look, we can beat each other up later, but they need our help now!” Sam reasoned.

This time, Crow-Man listened to his plea. He quickly stepped away from Sam who’d also pulled back from his attack run.

A second of gazing into each other’s eyes was all Sam and Crow-Man had for a decision to be made. And just like that, their fistfight ended, and they both moved toward the direction of the screams.

To Sam’s horror, the part of the roof the family was standing on had collapsed, and the little boy was dangling over the edge with only his sister’s hands keeping him from falling off. If that wasn’t bad enough, their mom’s leg had fallen into a hole that had opened up beneath her, trapping her in place.

“I’ve got the kid,” Sam blurted.

He dove forward with hands outstretched just as the boy’s sister lost the strength in her arms. She’d let her brother go by accident, but Sam had made it in the nick of time to pluck him out of gravity’s grasp.

“It’s alright now!” Sam assured the boy as his hand grasped the kid’s wrist. “I’ve got you!”

With a mighty heave, he lifted him up and dropped him back onto stable ground.

“Are you okay?” Sam asked as he knelt by the boy and checked him for injuries. “You don’t look too bad, thank the gods…”

Funnily enough, the boy didn’t look frightened by what almost happened. He was looking back at Sam with awe.

“Y-your face is healing on its own, mister,” the boy said.

He was right. Sam could feel the stinging pain from the many cuts and burns on the lower half of his face slowly recede. He wished Regeneration would work on the bruising in his gut too and make it just a little easier to move around again.

Sam ruffled the kid’s short curly hair. “Yeah…that’s my power.”

The sister arrived to wrap her arms around her kid brother who continued to stare back at Sam with admiration in his eyes. Looking at them now—the olive skin of their faces marred by soot—Sam guessed they were only twelve and ten. Much too young to have gone through what they just went through tonight.

Then he heard their mother cry out in pain, and he watched along with the kids as Crow-Man carried her over to them. Her leg, the one that had fallen through the hole in the roof had been burned pretty badly by the fires below.

Crow-Man’s eyes briefly passed over Sam.

“You can heal yourself,” Crow-Man deduced. “Can you heal her as well?”

The kids looked up at Sam with hope filling their faces too. It was only the second time anyone had ever looked at Sam like that. And for a brief second, his mind flashed on Thunder’s face during that terrible night when they first met.

Sam grinned from ear to ear as an emotion he’d never felt before swelled inside his chest. It was pride, he knew, not the bad kind that turned would-be heroes into megalomaniacal super-villains, but the kind that told Sam he was no longer as useless as he used to be.

“Yeah…” He nuzzled the kids aside to make room in front of him. “Set her down here and I’ll get to work on her.”