Minerva bowed her head slightly, acknowledging the compliment. She seemed like the kind of person who would be immune to compliments, but her whole posture changed after I said that, and I felt a weird little thump in my back, as she hit me out of nowhere, hard enough to make my wards flare.
I turned around and said, “What?”
But she just said, “Nothing,” and called for a car.
Then, as we were waiting, she said, “Turn and face me, I want to test something, too.”
I turned to face her, then she put her hand around my left bicep. “Wards up? And you haven’t lost your fortitude thing?”
I nodded.
“Tell me when this hurts. And don’t be a tough guy. Tell me the moment this starts to hurt.”
Minerva squeezed my bicep, reminding me just how weak and skinny my physical body was, even after months of training and hero work.
My wards flared as she continued to squeeze. “Seriously,” she said. “Do not let me hurt you. Tell me the minute this is too much.”
I nodded, pouring magic into my wards, still in that slow, deliberate way.
Minerva kept squeezing until my whole arm lit up, then finally pulled away.
“Take your jacket off and show me that arm. And Kovak, if that arm is red, I am gonna kick your ass. Take the jacket off and roll up your sleeve.”
I did. Minerva inspected my arm and seemed satisfied. “How much effort did it take to protect that arm?”
I shrugged. “It was sustained pressure on one part, and my confidence is pretty high right now. Scale of one to ten? Call it a four.”
Minerva nodded and said, “Good.”
Then she came around behind me and said, “Same thing now. Tell me as soon as this hurts.”
She put both hands on my hips and squeezed like we were dancing. My wards lit up again for the next minute or so until she stepped back and said, “Anything?”
“I’m fine.”
Our car arrived, and Minerva punched my other arm as I opened the door, presumably to see if she could force me inside. But my wards just flared again while I finished climbing in.
I gave her a confused look as she climbed in the other side but still got no response. We were about halfway back to VBC Tower when she suddenly lashed out and tried to punch me in the arm. But I had officially had enough of this and reached up to catch her hand. Her fist made a loud smacking sound as it landed in my palm, light strobing up and down my arm with the impact.
“Not in the car!” I shouted, provoking another grin as she put her hands in her lap.
We set down on a landing pad behind VBC Tower and I climbed out with her, intending to do some serious damage to the buffet.
Lydia was still being weird, refusing to get close to me while I smelled like Minerva, so I had spent the last week living on frozen dinners and take out sandwiches. The buffet was free for Bluestar badges, and if I could make it in there before 8 p.m., I might still be able to get some prime rib.
But Minerva was blocking the elevator door, staring at me. I apparently stood there too long, because she finally said, “Hey, are you stupid or gay?”
“What?”
“This is the part where you ask to come up.”
“What? Oh no. Oh, I got this all wrong. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t do that.”
“Shouldn’t is not a yes or a no. I need a yes or a no - and quickly, please, before we test the limits of my immortality.”
“It’s gotta be a no. She might give me a pass for an actual goddess, but I’m with somebody.”
Minerva cussed, “Dammit! You should have told me that two hours ago! Before I made a fool of myself! What did you think I was doing all day?”
“I don’t know. You were testing my reflexes and my wards and stuff, so I thought you were about to recruit me for Bluestar 2.”
“I was testing to make sure your hips wouldn’t shatter, and you thought I was recruiting you for a team?”
“I really am sorry. I’m terrible at reading signals from women. I’ve spent too much time with demons. They just come right out and say stuff.”
“It’s fine,” she said, in a tone that indicated it was not fine.
But I stopped her as she turned around. “Hey, wait a minute! Look, we can’t do what you wanted, but you’re obviously as bored as I am. All I’ve got waiting for me at home is an angry girlfriend and a frozen pizza, and I’ve never even seen a five-star suite. Can we just hang out?”
“Gods don’t really hang out. I don’t know how to do that.”
“It’s easy, you just sit around and laugh about stuff that annoys you. I know you’ve got plenty of stuff that annoys you.”
“So, you just want to be friends?”
“Why not?”
"I don’t know how to do that, either."
“You’ve been on Earth all this time and you don’t have any friends?”
“Something about me runs people off.”
“Well, you’ve got a friend tonight. C’mon, I’ll show you how to hang out.”
* * *
Minerva’s expressionless face cracked a tiny smile as she saw me gawking at everything from the elevator.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been impressed by an elevator,” she said. “I’ve spent so much time in these places, it all just blurs together now. But this is special for you, huh?”
“I grew up really poor, so yeah, this is pretty much my idea of paradise. I used to look up and dream of going inside buildings like this. I used to jump on the bus and drive by the shiny buildings downtown after dark, just so I could pretend I lived in one.”
“I can’t imagine anybody living in one of these boxes on purpose. I hate it here. The asphalt, the glass - metal and bricks everywhere. Everything smells. Even the living green stuff looks like it wants to die. I miss home so much.”
“By home you mean…”
“Olympus.”
"Actual Olympus? With Zeus and the mountain and everything?"
“Zeus is my great grandpa. He’s the one who exiled me here.”
“What did you do?”
“I stabbed his favorite boar.”
“That’s it? That’s all you did?”
“That’s all. I was used to just running down a boar and roasting it whenever I got hungry, so it never occurred to me that a boar in the city might belong to somebody. I was just a kid.”
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“Zeus exiled a child for hurting a pet by mistake? That’s despicable.”
“You shouldn’t talk about him like that. I don’t think he even bothers to watch me anymore, but just in case.”
“So, you really are the daughter of Athena?”
“Granddaughter.”
“But Athena was a virgin goddess.”
Minerva shrugged. “I guess Grandma changed her mind after she left Olympus for Earth. She broke her vow with a mortal man she fell in love with and had my mother, who also fell in love with a mortal, producing me.
“Mother went back to Olympus to have the baby and begged Zeus not to kill me. He was still pretty pissed at her, so he said he would only accept me if Mom confined herself to Tartarus.
“Athena’s handmaidens raised me until I was twelve, but I was already on probation, barely tolerated by the rest of the gods. Then I hurt the boar and that was all the excuse he needed to leave me down here."
“That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
Minerva said, “We’re here,” and let us into her suite.
Her room was like a sci-fi palace made from black marble, chrome, and smart glass. My optics lit up with a hundred subsystems as soon as she let me in. She had one of the best views in the city, but she wasn’t using it, having set the glass to display a movie-set version of Olympus, with vast green fields and bounding animals.
The furniture had been reinforced for a metahuman, but the chair still squeaked when she sat down. “I always get hungry after patrol, what do you want?” she offered.
“I’ve been looking forward to pizza all day, would that work for you? This was my idea, so I’ll buy you dinner. What’s your favorite place?”
She shook her head like I had just said something cute. “Stop trying to buy me stuff. I have an unlimited black card and I’ve never seen a bill. I could buy a car on this thing and crash it for fun.”
The way she said that really bothered me, because it didn’t sound hypothetical.
“Well, if it’s on the company card, do they have pizza for rich people? Not gross with lobster or caviar, but just normal pizza made with no synthetic stuff?”
“Sure,” she said. “Just use the VIP terminal, and whatever you get, get me three.”
I ordered four pizzas and paced around the giant space, big enough to fit two of my apartments in.
“Can I see the real view for a moment?”
She nodded and I banished fake Olympus, exposing the vast, battered skyline of Boston. My HUD immediately tracked and zoomed a building fire in the distance, but we were off duty, so this was not our problem. I switched my status to Off Work and tried to enjoy the view - the mix of old crumbling buildings next to new corporate arcologies, like the new world was slowly feeding off the old.
“You really love this,” Minerva said. “You love all the things I hate.”
“I’ve always been in awe of places like this; concrete and steel reaching to the sky, living in perfect comfort, pampered by machines, with a god’s view of the city. This is my Olympus. I hope that’s not insulting to you.”
“I just can’t imagine anyone loving what the Earth has become, and definitely not Boston. Your city is cursed. You know that, right?”
“It’s way too easy to get used to it,” I said, “until demons and monsters are just background noise. Do you know where it’s coming from? Do you know what keeps trying to wipe Boston off the map?”
Minerva shrugged. “Could be a hundred things. Ancient curse, revenge from Native Americans. They don’t think it’s a rift, but there are other ways to ‘port stuff in. It looks like a divine curse, punishing the city for something, but it’s not Olympian or Norse or any of the obvious pantheons. If I knew, I would stop it, and if you guys ever figure out what it is, I’ll be right there with you, when it’s time to clean it up.”
Minerva was so brusque, it was easy to forget she was a real hero, and not just another corporate camera hog.
“Thanks,” I said. “That actually means a lot to me.”
I sat in a big black chair across from her and groaned as the massage kicked in, sending grav waves through my aching back.
“I’m confused about your name,” I said. “Isn’t Minerva just the Roman form of Athena?”
“Minerva’s just my hero name, a tribute to grandma. My legal name is Jane Westchester; Jane for Jane Doe, Westchester for the county where I was found. I’m not allowed to use my Olympian name in exile, in case I do something to embarrass the family.”
“Zeus abandoned a child in the middle of a cursed city at twelve years old?”
“A super strong, invulnerable child, but yeah. I fucked up the first couple guys who approached me and child services called the DMA.
“A police officer stayed by my side and protected me for my first few years on Earth, even after I was snatched by the DMA.”
Minerva suddenly looked very sad. “Terry was the closest thing I ever had to a father. He would have adopted me if they had let him, but everybody around me had to be approved by the DMA. They tried to put me with a couple different foster families after he died, but I only lasted a couple months in each one before I broke something or hurt someone with my strength.
“Then I spent a long time in a research facility, isolated so I couldn’t hurt other children. The doctors and nurses really did care about me, but it was a horrible way to grow up.
“Finally, a pair of retired super people took me to Alaska and tried to train me to control my strength. It was paradise; almost as good as being back home. I would still be there if they had let me stay, but I came home one day, and my parents were just gone. A couple of agents stuffed me in a car and took me to a training facility for young heroes in New York. I’ve been fighting ever since.”
“I know I just keep sitting here saying I’m sorry, but I am. That’s not right, the way they used you.”
She shrugged again. “The training team was actually pretty good. I was finally doing something fun with kids my own age. I even had my first boyfriend. I only hurt him a couple times, but he went back home to Russia, and my social life has been guys on the circuit ever since.”
“What do people mean when they say circuit? Everybody talks about it, but nobody ever explains.”
“It’s just a general term for the hero life, hopping between different teams in different cities to work with new people and keep your skills sharp. They like mixing me up and running sims on me, to try and find optimal team-ups. I would call you and Hardy an optimal team-up, but somebody is hot to test you and see if you can perform just as well away from her.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who wants to recruit me?”
“Everything about you is weird. These orders didn’t come from my usual team liaison. They came straight from the CEO’s office at HDI. Tamerlane is interested in you, personally, and when he says go, you just go.
"You should know that every fight we have, every punch we throw, everything we do together will be recorded and fed to expert systems who can flag problems and suggest strategies. They’re not able to tap your POV, but I’ve got a dozen people watching mine. There are supposed to be privacy guards when I’m off duty, but I still take all my stuff out as soon as I hit the door. They would low-jack me with a full neural implant if they could pierce my skull.”
“Jesus,” I said. “How do you know they can’t tap me?”
“One of my handlers complained about it. They said you’ve got your own extra security installed, and some robot butler thing was running countermeasures every time they probed you. Did Phil install that for you?”
“No,” I said. “That’s mine. I’m good with machines.”
“So, you’re a wizard who can hit like a truck and you can hack stuff? No wonder they want you. You’d be a one-man extraction team.”
* * *
“Have you even been to your first convention yet?” she asked through a mouthful of pizza.
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Oh man,” she grinned. “You’re gonna love it. A young guy like you, at your power level, good at meeting people and making friends? Conventions are half seminar, half party for us. Really more than half party. I’m not saying every night is an orgy, but everybody pairs off and tries out new partners, in more ways than one. It’s a small community, and we get really close fighting together. It’s a weird life, but it’s not all bad. You can make some good friends there, if you’re into that kind of thing.
“I don’t know what you’ve got going with your local girl, but a single guy fresh on the circuit would be very popular. I don’t know what magic guys are into, but there’s a faerie girl on Bluestar 6 who tastes like candy.”
“I’m gonna regret asking this, but how do you know what she…”
“Oh, I’m not into girls,” Minerva said. “God, I wish I was. Everybody wants me to be a lesbian. Everybody. Every time my Q-rating dips, my publicist has me get my picture taken with a new hot girl. They’re probably gonna have me do a photo shoot with Hardy soon, so don’t get weird, okay? It’s strictly a PR thing.”
“But you and this faerie girl still…”
“Oh, she’s an exception to that rule. She’s an exception to everybody’s rule. She’s a legend on the circuit, almost like a ride people take. Come to her room at night and she’ll bring you in and do her mind control thing on you for an hour or so.
“Sonny calls her The Eraser, because as long as you’re under her spell, nothing else exists. You do what she tells you to do, and you feel what she tells you to feel, until the spell runs out. She’s kinky as hell, but not mean, so most guys love it. You can walk in with a broken heart and totally forget it for a while, until she dumps you back in the hall with a big smile on your face.”
“And you signed up for this ride?”
“My team leader asked me to do it, to see if I would be immune to faerie mind control. I was not, so I had the time of my life. Or at least, that’s how I remember it. I don’t know if I really liked it, or if she kind of made me like it.”
“Jesus,” I said. “So, the Bluestar 6 team includes a tiny rapist?”
“Not exactly. Everything is fair game once you consent to the spell. I guess somebody could complain to corporate, but nobody ever has.”
* * *
We finished our pizza, and I was astonished at the amount Minerva was able to put away. Even with the amount of energy she must have been expending just to exist on Earth, where was all this food going?
“Listen,” I said, going for it. “I’m never gonna get a chance to talk to a goddess again, so can I ask you a bunch of weird questions about how your body works?”
Minerva blinked. “How weird you wanna get?”
“You just ate like five pounds of pizza, are you gonna be in the bathroom all night?”
“Why would I…? Oh, no. Gods don’t do that; I don’t . Gods have to be really careful with that kind of thing, since anything that comes out of me could be used in a spell.
“I don’t know where the food goes, but I get really hungry when I’m fighting, and food is really the only good thing about the Earth.”
“Do you sweat? We’ve been out here fighting all day; do you need a shower?”
Minerva shrugged. “I sweat when something makes me work. I guess if I smell bad, I need to know. You tell me.”
So, I leaned in and took a whiff, which turned out to be a whole new kind of mistake.
I cleared my throat and slowly backed away. “Oooohhh-kay. I’m gonna…” I cleared my throat again and started moving my chair back. “I don’t know what that is, but I’m just gonna sit back here for a little bit so I don’t accidentally start… worshipping you, or something.”