I knew exactly when the Simurgh touched down, and the battle to fight her off began.

  Not for any metaphysical reason. As far as I was aware, she was no more connected to me or magic than anything else in this world. Instead, what I could feel was this cycle's quest almost immediately kicked in, suddenly and without warning. It me to go, or at least expected me to, but despite the disappointment of missing out on extra points, I stayed in my seat, uneasily waiting for the all-clear signal. That fact of the matter was, as much as I absolutely hated it, Smokey had been right. The risk was just way too big to tempt fate, especially when there was so little I could actually do, even with the offer of extra charges.

  I could not forget that I represented a solid chance for this world to finally have some actual peace from the Endbringers. I just had to live long enough to figure out how to beat them. I was not ready to fight an Endbringer, but someday I would be.

  Eventually, after around seven minutes, Piper called from far outside the fight area, having been carried there by a Golem. Miss Militia quickly shut her down, as connecting to people outside a Simurgh fight was not a good idea. Not long after that, however, she jumped back, announcing that the fight was over and that the Simurgh had retreated. The fact that her armband did not immediately explode for leaving the area of conflict confirmed that the fight was over.

  Once everyone had calmed down, Piper brought me over to Canberra, and then I spent a bit bouncing back and forth between there and Brockton Bay. It was a pain, but getting everyone on board and ready to help was more than worth it. As we left the arrival space, a heavily trampled area where the various teleporters working with the Protectorate had dropped off the many heroes involved with the fight, we quickly split up and went our separate ways. Piper and I headed into the city while New Wave, Protectorate, and Wards went to find the staging area to be directed. Miss Militia tried to get me to follow them, but It was clear that the powers that be, whoever was in charge of the battle, were still catching up with the aftershocks of driving off the Simurgh.

  I wasn't about to wait twenty minutes while they figured out their shit.

  Instead, Piper and I headed into the city on the lookout for the guardians and their golems. I rode on top of Troy while Piper ran beside me. Both of us were forced to jump and skirt around debris as we moved into the city. After barely making it across a partially collapsed bridge, we arrived at the spot Smokey and his team had cleared for us to set up shop. A large lawn that surrounded a half-collapsed office building made it the perfect place for me to work. I had barely set foot on it, stepping around a golem dragging half of what looks sort of like a streamlined humvee, clearly a military vehicle, when Smokey spotted me and jogged to greet me.

  "Arcanum, glad you're here," He said with a smile. "We've been making do with the mass heals you gave us, but we are just about tapped."

  "I'm surprised they lasted this long," I admitted. "Let me set up a place to work, and then you can start bringing people in."

  "Will do."

  I looked around for a moment, before taking five normal acorns from inside Troy, planting them in a general rectangle before standing in the center. I chanted out a longer-than-usual bit of druidcraft spellwork, a new spell from the subject's recent level increase. As the spell finished, I reached out with the magic and took control over all five acorns, fusing them with magic and forcing them to grow. Four of them became an organic roof and four walls of a massive structure with a densely interwoven leaf ceiling. The fifth tree became the wooden floor and some assorted furniture, including a dozen beds, chairs, and a few tables. I also grew benches around the exterior walls and corners, giving people a place to sit if they needed to.

  I finished off the building with a few secondary spells, also from druidcraft, fusing the leaves of the roof to form a waterproof barrier. Once I was done, Piper and Smokey stepped inside, and the latter shouted out some orders to the other guardians.

  "What about food?" Smokey asked when he was done directing his siblings. "It might be useful to have some plants ready to feed people."

  "Yes, but this is already pushing it without getting permission," I pointed out. "I need to find someone in charge and ask first. This is just a building, so if someone freaks out and demands it be taken down, it's not that big of a deal. If I make a couple of orchards of food, and someone reacts badly? We might have riots on our hands."

  "I'll start asking questions," Smokey nodded. "These armbands are linked together, and Dragon, the tinker, is on the other end. I think we should be able to get permission through there."

  "Focus on recovering people first," I ordered, using more fine-tuned plant control to layer the beds with softer vines and other materials, before covering and sealing it in with a sheet for each bed. "Starvation won't set in for a while, but injuries will kill someone much faster. And spread the word that I'm healing here."

  "Right, yeah, okay," Smokey confirmed.

  Before he could say anything else, the first load of people was brought in, eight golems carrying ten injured people inside the large healing structure. They were laid down in beds or placed in chairs, and I immediately set to work. I was four patients in when I realized my first issue. I cast some basic healing magic to wash away someone's admittedly bad road rash, before snagging Piper's attention. She was staying with me to help, directing three golems to continue clearing the area.

  "People with nonlethal issues can wait outside," I explained, already moving on to the next injury, a severe compound fracture in a young woman's arm. "We can't have them taking up my time when there are people with more serious injuries."

  "Understood," She said with a nod, before stepping outside. I could hear her talking, shifting up in volume to address the guardians outside, as well as what was apparently a crowd of interested people.

  I quickly settled into a rhythm, a quick rotation of scanning, healing, and re-scanning to confirm a person was well before sending them out. Most of the people being brought in were conscious enough to consent to parahuman healing, but some were not. Since this was an emergency situation, in the cases that the unconscious people were in danger of dying if they weren't healed quickly, I would fix them until they could wake up, which was when I would ask if I could continue healing them.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Luckily, that wasn't what I would call a frequent occurrence, nor was being told that someone didn't want to be healed.

  Every once in a while, I would head outside to look over the waiting area of sorts, the groups of people with minor, nonlethal injuries. While some people left after waiting for half an hour to get a bruise or two checked, since we didn't know how quickly the city would be stabilized, I treated the injuries like I did the Docks community or any homeless person I healed. While a well-fed, well-sheltered, well-cleaned person was less likely to get an infection, even the smallest wounds on a homeless person could cause significant issues. When the minor injury space filled up, I would go outside and cast a few mass heals. The less guided healing energy was significantly less efficient and thorough, but it was more than enough for cuts, scrapes, and bruises.

  I had been healing for about forty minutes before I started to see signs of the Protectorate, PRT, and just general local infrastructure reaching us in the deeper parts of the city. Surprisingly, perhaps due to me being a known factor to the PRT, nobody complained about the shelter I grew, nor even commented on the system I rather crudely set up. Instead, several doctors, nurses, and EMTs joined us, quickly refining the triage system I had going, checking everyone my golems were bringing back, making much better-educated choices of who was in more desperate need of healing and who could wait.

  On top of that, the crowds of people who came out of curiosity were pushed back by the PRT and Australian Defence Force, giving us some much-appreciated breathing room. I also got an answer for the food orchard question, which more or less just confirmed my suspicions. Between supplies in the city and supplies coming from nearby locations, food would not be an issue for a week, at least. My request to grow an orchard in order to stop it from becoming an issue at all was passed up the chain as well.

  Almost immediately after the various agencies arrived, the number of people I was healing jumped up significantly. I was forced to give up working on minor injuries entirely, letting Piper and a few doctors handle them.

  Hours passed, and the healing continued, my golems and guardians working tirelessly alongside military, volunteers, and capes alike to pull people from buildings, fight fires, and straighten out car wrecks. Smokey kept me updated on how the situation was going, and as time passed, the reports became more and more stable.

  At some point, I became aware that my aid station had gained a few bodyguards. Dauntless, one of Brockton Bay's most well-known heroes, kept overwatch in the air, floating about thirty meters directly up over my building. At the same time, Miss Militia was following me around directly, managing to keep out of my way while sticking to my side. There were also a few other heroes keeping watch around the hub that had formed around my temporary healing structure while Assault Battery were following Piper around.

  While I was a bit confused by that, I didn't have time for questions, my workload was too high, and I couldn't afford to slow down. My "breaks" usually consisted of stuffing my face with simple food before asking someone to bring me to the other aid tents, where I would use my anti-sleep spell to give everyone I could find the equivalent of a full night's sleep in a few seconds. The second time I could do it myself, bouncing around via teleport, dragging Miss Militia with me, as she was not happy to be left behind the first time.

  Eventually, long after the sun had set and an emergency generator had to be set up to fill the hub area with light, the constant pace of people being found slowly began to decrease. What was once a constant flow was now an occasional burst, with a trickle keeping us occupied in between. I had treated hundreds and hundreds of people and healed more injuries than I ever had before, combined. I had actually made natural, learned progress with short casting a few healing spells, no additional purchase of quick cast necessary.

  It was during one of those downtimes when I finally got the chance to talk to Miss Militia for more than a few seconds.

  "I appreciate the backup," I assured her, the Protectorate heroine looking over at me after watching my last patient leave. "And I understand that protecting the healer is important, but none of the other healers I met today had personally assigned protectorate bodyguards. The closest was Panacea, but that was New Wave. And why Piper?"

  "The Protectorate thought it was important to put extra protections in place around you and Piper after how the fight with the Simurgh went," She explained, about to continue only to stop when she saw my confused face. "Wait, you don't know?"

  "Know what?"

  "Arcanum, this is the lowest cape death counter ever recorded for the Simurgh," Miss Militia explained. "And the shortest time is taken to drive her off unaided. Only Scion has driven her off faster, and only once. Less than ten minutes to drive her off is… incredible."

  "Oh… Alright, that's good, but what does that have to do with me?"

  "Before the fight began, Piper used her ability to increase everyone's durability and luck," Miss Militia explained. "They have no idea if that was the cause, but for now, they aren't taking any chances."

  I frowned and considered her words. I knew from my knowledge of rituals and spell crafting, that luck was often considered the bane of fate in worlds with enough magic to have such a concept. Luck as a force was tied into the very lining of reality and, in a world like this, was almost completely undetectable. It would have to exist on some level, as, again, it was connected to the very fabrics of existence, but adding a bit of luck to someone wouldn't have that much of an effect on someone, especially at the levels I knew Piper was working at. It would certainly help, especially when you pulled back and looked at the numbers, but with the power Piper had, the effects should have only shown up as a bare statistical anomaly, a slight tilt towards better results, not a heavy full-hand on the scales.

  Something wasn't adding up.

  "Her luck blessing shouldn't have had that much of an effect on the situation," I said with a frown. "Do they have any other theories?"

  "That the Simurgh is lulling us into a false sense of security, allowing us to think we have some sort of tool to use against her," She responded, her eyes dulled at the idea. "That way, the next time she attacks, we will be even more unprepared for her."

  "That's… horrifying," I admitted, shivering a bit with a frown. "I don't blame you guys for hoping that it was Piper's blessing…Can you tell me more about how it all went down?"

  "Dauntless could. He was actually here, in the thick of it," She pointed out. "Want to talk to him?"

  "If you wouldn't mind."

  She tapped the communication device in her ear, talking into it for a few moments. Just a moment later, Dauntless, in all his Roman glory, stepped into the temporary structure.

  "You wanted to see me, Miss Militia?"

  "Yes, thank you, Dauntless," She nodded, before gesturing to me. "Arcanum just learned why we are hanging around. He's got some questions about how the fight went."

  "Ah. Right," He said, with a grim nod. "I'll do my best, but… well, a lot was happening."

  "I don't need you to retell every detail. I don't want to put you through all of that," I assured the empowering hero. "I need more general information. The flow of the fight, anything you found odd, stuff like that."

  "That doesn't narrow it down very much, Arcanum," He responded, half sitting on one of the beds. "The whole fucking this was odd. But I'll do my best."