I took a sip of water as I held Persephone against my shoulder. Gert Yorkes was hovering, almost nervous, around the edge of my kitchen counter. "Spit it out, Gert."

Gert looked down and blushed in a way that interacted with her newly purple hair weirdly, "Sorry," she said. "Um, I guess – Uh – I wanted some relationship advice."

"Well," I said, leaning against the counter and thinking. "I'm not sure I'm the best adviser – Andromeda approached me."

"That's actually why," Gert said. "She said she was insecure about her looks before the serum and I was wondering why you were interested?"

It didn't seem appropriate to tell her that it was a failed honey pot trap to obtain access to SHIELD. Well, it had succeeded in the end. How to tell Gert something like the truth, in a way that would be helpful to say. "First of all, whatever Andromeda thought at the time, a poorly kept secret is that men are a horny bunch. Men find women attractive. So, uh, I wasn't unaffected by Andromeda's appearance. But, if you're asking me why Andromeda when I could've had anybody I wanted, it wasn't looks. She sparked an interest. We had a fun conversation, shared interest in foreign policy. I was intrigued by her shadowy government job."

Gert laughed, "Okay, shared interest in foreign policy is good news for me."

So it probably wasn't Chase. "Oh, do I know the guy?"

"No, no, a guy from school – Well, we met up at one of the sympathy marches for Chile, but he goes to my school."

Dominoes had started falling in South America and our old friends in Chile had managed to scrounge up the forces for a coup in Chile. General Salcedo, a long-time asset, had emerged President Salcedo and a Hydra member, so we had a foothold in South America. It had been clean enough. Salcedo's enthusiasm for SWORD and happiness to align with the United States and Russia internationally,

Unfortunately for us, the American people weren't completely asleep at the wheel – Partially, this was a form of political boredom, but there were people with real commitments to it who were doing a good job turning those bored college students into proper members of a mass movement. Apparently, including Gert.

"That's nice," I said.

"You don't think it's nice," Gert observed. She was blunt in this instance. I was beginning to suspect I might have been tricked into this conversation. Deceit, it isn't about being good at lying. It's about trust. If I've said once, I've said it a hundred times.

"The situation with Salcedo is complicated," I said, without bothering to lie about it. Maybe she would just let me skate out of this conversation without a confrontation.

"Things are complicated when you arrest the sitting President on false charges, yeah, lies are complicated."

"Salcedo's predecessor really was corrupt," I said. Which was… true enough for my purposes. Chile's government was never exactly clean.

"So he took a few bribes and that makes it okay for the military to oust him?"

"It was a crime," I pointed out.

Gert was getting mad, she was frowning and glaring. "This is all just an exercise in excuse making to you, isn't it?"

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"Look, Salcedo's predecessor, my opinion on the legitimacy of his arrest isn't relevant. I'm an American, our well-meaning interventions in Latin America don't exactly have a great track record." This was all obviously an exercise in excuse making. My nature as an opportunist meant I didn't feel deeply that Salcedo should be doing. The support his government is giving to SWORD, the opening up to the Osiris Education system, all of it will help make the world to be more prepared for our interstellar problems. But it would also help me and mine, personally.

"I don't think any of those interventions were really well meaning," Gert said.

Girl had a point, but also this wasn't well meaning either. I did think an aggressive policy of uplift and improvement would massively improve the well-being of the Chilean people, especially as most of their extraction and mining programs were falling in future estimated value as the Plutonian proved to be more than able to extract sufficient shares of any metal that struck our fancy. But I wasn't doing it for Chile, I was doing it for the future world that we would build from this one.

"Gert, I have to work with his government, I have to work with every government on the planet." Persephone was getting a little fussy, so I turned my head toward her and kissed her. "It's alright Persephone."

"So, you just do what is convenient to you?"

God, Gert was preachy. Had I been like this as an activist? I probably had been. "I just do what I have to do to protect this world and your family and my daughter, Gert. It's not all clean and simple," I said, reining in my irritation. "I understand that there are good reasons to oppose Salcedo's government. But I have a responsibility. It's not convenient to take that seriously, you know how often I have to be gone."

Gert managed to look a bit contrite at that, looking down at floor. "I shouldn't have said it was just convenience. But, Mike, I know that there are reasons why you do these things, but there are good reasons not to do them too."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Maybe so." I didn't love ending an argument with a deflection, but I also had to recognize that Gert was just acting concerned with what her friends were concerned with. "You going to ask out the boy?"

"Yeah," Gert said, "Uh, to be honest, I had kind of decided to before I talked to you. But it was a big encouragement!"

"Gert, I am one of the smartest men on the planet. I figured that out."

"Sorry!" Gert said, grabbing her hands nervously. "I just… You're, you know, a really big deal and people listen to you and I'm just a kid, but I felt like I had this- I was in a really special position as someone who was able to talk to you and maybe try to convince you- And so I did. Are you mad?"

Was I mad? I was a little mad. But Gert was my daughter's babysitter and my friends' daughter and her opinion didn't really matter in the long run as long as she didn't get dead set against me, which clearly wasn't going to be helped if I said I was mad. "No, I'm not mad."