CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE

Healers on a Battlefield Equals Victory

Sam wasn’t a huge fan of the Fates. These ambiguous trio of goddesses who’d thrown him into one ginormous mess after another since he’d become an Argonaut. Sam particularly didn’t like them for saddling him with the back-breaking responsibility of a great prophecy. The one that foretold the rise of the Gigantes and the ending of the world, which the Fates, through their handmaiden Farsight, claimed only Sam could prevent. “If the Healing Hand gathers the blessed to face the World and finish the Quest… Champions might rise to answer the call or to fear and pain mankind shall fall…”

“Being chosen by the Fates isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” he reasoned.

Sam was particularly annoyed that the Fates had shoved him into yet another team-up with so few heroes when a large-scale prison break required at least a full ten-man raid team to subdue. Minimum. Unfortunately, apart from Crow-Man and Bethany, there were only two other reinforcements among a sea of villains desperate to escape the Crucible.

“Don’t you die on me now!” yelled the young, blue-haired Asian woman in the blue jumpsuit who was kneeling over one of the Crucible’s security guards while her hands were deep inside the man’s guts. “I need some ice over here, Jin Oppa!”

“It’s Ice Brand, Miracle Girl!” yelled the slender, white-haired, slanted-eyed man who Thunder had left in charge of tying up the villains at the other end of the administrative floor. As he waved his right hand forward, the hero in the gray coat snapped his fingers. The water vapors in the air froze all at once, creating a wall of ice that stopped the nearby villains from fleeing up to what remained of the platform above. “At least use my moniker when we’re surrounded by villains who would kill to know our real names!”

Ice Brand’s plea fell on deaf ears though because Miracle Girl was busy fending off the villain Cheetor who had tried to ambush her from behind while she was focused on healing the wounded security guard.

“Hey, I’m healing here!” Miracle Girl pulled back her fist—which was coated in a ball of pale blue energy that was glittering like it was reflecting a night sky filled with stars—and then hurled it into Cheetor’s gut. “Here, have some Miracle Punch, douchebag!”

It wasn’t as strong a hit as Sam’s Herculean-fueled punches, but the fist that glowed with apparent starlight did manage to blow the polymorph villain into the crowd of incoming inmates behind him, earning Miracle Girl a brief reprieve which was enough time for her to notice Sam’s presence between Crow-Man and Thunder.

“Holy shit, guy, what are you doing here?” Miracle Girl eyed Sam in surprise before she switched to flashing him a welcome grin. “Get over here and do that group heal thing you did in Kansas!”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam’s gaze drifted to the group of injured security guards Miracle Girl had rounded up during the fight, “I should probably help with that…”

“Go, Sam,” Thunder insisted. She cocked her right arm and summoned a lightning bolt to her hand. Beside her, Crow-Man pulled out another pair of throwing knives from his belt, and he was already mid-throw when he told Sam, “We can handle things here.”

Sam didn’t feel as confident while he skirted the giant hole in the floor and avoided energy blasts and purple flames to get to where Miracle Girl waited by the round room’s eastern wall. He wasn’t sure Mass Healing would work on the large number of injured people she’d gathered around her. Many of whom looked like they were already at death’s door.

“Holy Zeus,” Sam breathed in the stench of blood, “this is going to be tough…”

“And I’m not even getting paid to work this hard,” Miracle Girl grumbled.

Despite her words, Miracle Girl was working extra hard to keep the most injured of the group alive. A gray-haired, mustachioed man with the silver bars of a captain pinned to the shoulders of his coat had his guts leaking out of the wide gash in his belly. The only reason they didn’t spill out of him completely was due to the star-spangled energy field Miracle Girl wrapped around his stomach.

“I can put a stopper in death just as well as you, but I can only focus on one person per round,” she admitted as she glanced up at Sam with imploring eyes. “I don’t expect you to heal them all but save those you can and we can turn this fight around lickety-split.”

“Can I do it?” Sam asked under his breath.

It is possible to heal up to eight people with each use of [Mass Healing (ζ)].] Triple-A reported. [However, successive uses are not recommended while your health is below fifty percent.

It was as if Triple-A had already deduced Sam’s intent to heal all thirty of the Crucible’s security team that were huddled around him and Miracle Girl.

The system’s got a point, kid… Too much healing might make you too weak to fight afterward, Chiron chimed in. But you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?

“This is the only way we can win,” Sam whispered.

I see you’re finally using your head, Chiron guffawed. Make sure you’ve got one of these heroes protecting you while you cast Mass Healing though… You’re a sitting duck while that power’s active.

Of course, she hadn’t heard Chiron’s suggestion out loud, but Bethany arrived at that exact moment to provide Sam with his much-needed protection.

“I’ll watch your backs.” She raised her hands forward and conjured a telekinetic dome to fall around them. One big enough to cover the healers and their injured charges. “You two just make sure to heal my guys back to fighting shape.”

“We’re not dead yet, ma’am,” whispered the guard-captain Miracle Girl was working to heal.

“Y-yeah,” whispered another injured guard to the right of Sam. “W-we’re W-War Maiden… trained.”

“We’re… we’re War Maiden’s elite,” another guard agreed.

A spattering of nods and praises from these dying men and women caused Bethany’s cheeks to blush. “Don’t call me that, idiots.”

Sam patted Bethany reassuringly on the shoulder before he placed his hands together as if in prayer—forming a circle with his arms which would function as a makeshift arcane array that would help channel his powerful gift—and then he whispered, “Mass Healing.”

His entire body lit up like an aurora of green hues. Glowing tendrils of energy spread out of him to drift over to the first eight injured guards closest to him. These tendrils speared into them, filling them with life energy that supercharged their bodies’ own ability to regenerate. Garish wounds began to close and broken bones began to mend. Soon enough, these eight soldiers were rising to their feet with fingers tightening on their weapons.

“I’m ashamed I believed in the nonsense the Herald was selling everyone,” said the first guard to rise. He was older than Sam with specks of gray peppering his hair. “Thanks for this, man. We’ll pay you back.”

With his gratitude to Sam conveyed, the security team’s sergeant led his team out of Bethany’s bubble to join the other heroes in subduing the Crucible’s inmates.

The arrival of reinforcements caused a great deal of confusion among the villains who ganged up on the three heroes who were preventing their escape. Unfortunately, their collective confusion was quickly replaced with the realization that Sam—who was lit up like a beacon in the darkness—was responsible for this turn of events, which suddenly made him everyone’s target.

“Keep going, Herculean,” Bethany ordered. “I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.”

“You ain’t doing it alone, ma’am,” said the guard captain who was finally back to his feet, and he wasn’t alone to do so.

An exhausted Sam had just finished healing another batch of eight. Luckily, these guys weren’t as injured as the previous group which helped to cut the time and life force it took to heal them. And, while they took up a defense line in front of Bethany’s telekinetic barrier, Miracle Girl arrived at Sam’s side to check on his condition.

“You look half dead,” she noted.

“No way… I can do this… all day,” Sam huffed.

“Uhuh.” Miracle Girl unslung the canteen strapped to her belt and offered it to Sam. “Try some Energizer X. It’s a drink I filled with Miracle Power. It’ll fix you right up with just a few sips better than any of those energy drinks you can get at a convenience store.”

“Miracle… power?” Sam eyed the contents of the canteen she offered him. The water inside of it shone like a sea of sparkling stars. “Is that really… what you’re calling it?”

“What else would you call the gift of love and miracles?” Miracle Girl puffed her chest.

Because she was a healer, most people associated Miracle Girl with Apollo or his son, Asclepios, as they were both gods of healing. She wasn’t one of their blessed though. From what Sam had read on the forums, Miracle Girl wasn’t even a hero of the Olympian pantheon.

“And, uh, which god gave you this, um, miracle power again?” Sam asked curiously.

“Who else but Freya is that awesome,” Miracle Girl said proudly.

Freya, the Norse Goddess of Love, Fertility, Battle, and Death didn’t sound like much of a healer to Sam. “ I thought Freyr was… the healer among the siblings…”

“Common misconception.” Miracle Girl shoved her canteen into Sam’s hands. “Freyr may be the god of springtime, but my gift’s one of those rare blessings that harness bits of power from all of Freya’s spheres of influence.”

“Kind of like… life force.” Sam tipped the canteen to his lips and drank his fill of Miracle Girl’s Energizer-X, which, surprisingly, did exactly what its name suggested. Sam’s fatigue quickly went down from [87%] to [25%], giving him back enough stamina for another round of Mass Healing.

“Save some of that Energizer-X for me,” Bethany called. “I kind of like it… and I’m going to need it soon.”

Powerful as she was, the beta-level telekinetic former heroine couldn’t indefinitely hold back the tide of villains gunning for Sam and Miracle Girl. Fortunately, the security team Bethany had apparently helped train proved to be even better at subduing the escaped inmates better than Sam thought. And, as he watched the villains fall like flies in front of the security team’s line of defense, Sam wondered how these prisoners had even managed to injure them so badly in the first place.

“It wasn’t the inmates who’d taken my guys out… This was Bloodfyre’s doing,” Bethany revealed.

Bloodfyre—it was the moniker of the alpha-level villain who was known to be one of Superion’s worst rogues. She was a gifted of Hades, one who could ignite the blood in others and make them burn from the inside while also possessing a secondary gift, which was the power to temporarily manipulate the blood of others into whatever shape she desired.

“Holy Styx…” Sam’s gaze searched the hall. “Is she still—”

“Gone,” Bethany sighed. “She broke in and escaped with the Trickster.”

“Wh-what?!” Sam yelled.

Sam’s surprise would be short-lived, however, as a mass of villains had begun to surround Bethany’s telekinetic barrier. Prisoners who were powerful enough to withstand the barrage of powered bullets fired from the security team’s elemental cannons.

Thunder, Ice Brand, Crow-Man, and the eight security guards who’d gone to help them were also surrounded at the other end of the hall. Their two groups were cut off from helping each other by a wall of purple flames conjured by the despicable Helfire.

“How many godsdamn prisoners can this stupid prison hold?!” Miracle Girl complained.

However, as things were about to turn from bad to worse, the wall of purple flames suddenly winked out. Dissipated by a strong gust of wind that blew into the room like a hurricane.

“Holy shit…” Like everyone on that battlefield, Miracle Girl’s gaze drifted up to the sky. “The big gun’s here… We win.”

The man floating above the Crucible’s walls cut an impressive figure with his broad back blocking the now cloudless sky like a silhouette set against the warm light of the sun.

“Whoa, it’s him,” Sam whispered.

Piercing blue eyes gazed down at the crowd below, and those prisoners who caught his gaze turned away from him in fright. Although the man himself seemed to be smiling down at them like an understanding teacher about to scold some naughty first-graders who’d gotten a little too wild during playtime.

“Kind of makes you want to ask for his photograph, huh?” Miracle Girl said.

“Um, you think we can?” Sam wondered.

Miracle Girl gave Sam a side-eyed glance that came with a raised eyebrow. “Wow, you’re even more of a nerd than I heard.”

“As if you didn’t want to ask for his autograph either,” Sam countered.

It took a second longer, but Miracle Girl smirked. “I’ve already got it.”

As he descended to the Crucible’s administrative floor, many of the prisoners who’d been so feverish in their pursuit of freedom fell to their knees while many more wrung their hands in frustration. That was just the kind of effect America’s number one hero had on most people. Just like that, the battle of the Crucible ended in the heroes’ victory.