Some people may think it was condescending, the way I helped Minerva, like I should have trusted a strong woman to solve her own problems. But every strong person is weak to something, and even the strongest people need help from time to time.

Minerva was one of the strongest people I ever met, mentally and physically, but she had a trillion-dollar corporation paying a whole team to keep her lonely and confused, dozens of doctors and teachers and counselors paid to treat her like an alien who would never belong.

But I didn’t have to go out and make friends for her; all I did was get them on the phone.

I called them each in turn, each person she had befriended who had been kicked off the team, and I heard the same story three times.

Every one of them had been lied to. Every one of them had been told Minerva wanted them off the team and each one had been given strict instructions to never contact her again.

They had all been shocked and hurt, because they all thought they had been betrayed by a friend.

I got them each on a secure line and was able to convince them they had been lied to - manipulated by the same people who were lying to Minerva. I told them Minerva was trying to break away from the assholes who had been running her life, and she needed all the help she could get.

I was only able to find three of them, but they were all pretty cool. Aaron Zendarro was a badass who literally drove racecars before he got powers. He was in a terrible wreck when his car smashed into the side of a track, but instead of killing him, the wreck made his powers kick in, so he could suddenly fly and shoot fire from his hands.

Dave Fiocchi was a gun guy like Randall, but more of a gunslinger than a heavy weapons guy, using these weird metallic pistols that looked like they had been stolen from an alien spaceship. He said they were Atlantean blasters that could fire a bunch of different kinds of energy once you “attuned” to them, but the batteries had to be charged up with magic.

I charged up his batteries for him at one point and he let me hold the blasters for a minute. They felt small but weirdly heavy, and he assured me they could knock a hole in the side of a battleship if he used the right setting.

The third one, Lido, was a Filippino wind goddess, maybe even the real thing. Jade found out she was coming and begged to be the one to meet her. Weird to see a celebrity like Jade be a fangirl for someone else, but I guess even famous people can be intimidated by other famous people, if they’re famous enough.

I finally managed to get all three of them in one bar on our night off and convinced Minerva to come with me. I told her to keep it casual, so I got my first look at her in civilian clothes - a leather jacket, blue jeans, and a vintage white t-shirt with RONIN ATHLETICS printed in simple black letters.

“Tim, I swear, if you’re setting up some kind of lame pseudo-date…”

“It’s not a date,” I promised, leading her into the room. “It’s way better than a date.”

The bar was called Voices, decorated with a hundred black and white pictures of journalists and radio personalities no one had ever heard of. I recognized George Burns and Jack Benny, but who the hell was Robin Duff?

I carefully stepped aside as we walked in and let Minerva see her friends seated around the little wooden table. They all stood up as she entered and we all endured a long awkward moment as they stared at each other, each one struggling with the lies they had been told.

Then Aaron walked up to her and held his hand up. Minerva held up her hand in response and he gently touched his palm to hers, a ritual she had apparently worked out with all three of them as a substitute for handshakes and hugs.

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Dave came up and repeated the gesture, then Lido flew out of her chair, literally flew, and hugged her, wrapping her in arms that looked like living clouds.

I carefully pretended not to notice as Minerva almost cried. The wooden chair squeaked as she sat down, but didn’t collapse, thank god, as this was not the first group of metas to grab a drink in this bar.

I was prepared to quietly slip away and leave Minerva with her friends, but Dave shouted, “Where are you going? This is your party, pal. Sit the fuck down.”

They all stared at each other for another minute, then Lido asked the question point-blank. “Jane, did you have me kicked off Bluestar 2?”

Minerva said, “No.”

“Did you have Dave kicked off?”

Minerva said, “No,” again.

“Aaron?”

“No.”

“Have you ever asked for anybody to be kicked off that team?”

Minerva said, “No.”

“Did you file a sexual harassment claim against me?” Aaron asked.

“What?” Minerva blinked. “No!”

Aaron the Fire Guy brought up a holographic display between them and zoomed part of a document. “Is this your signature?”

“That looks like the signature I use for autographs, but I would never put ‘Minerva’ on a legal document. Can I see that?”

Aaron angled the display and let Minerva scroll through it until she started shaking her head. “You never did this. And even if you had, I wouldn’t file paperwork. I would have just broken your arm.”

“Did you tell Capes magazine I created a ‘toxic work environment’ on the team?” Lido asked.

“What?” Minerva said again. “They don’t let me talk to Capes. I can’t stand interviews, and they would never let me talk to a journalist alone. My publicist does all that.”

Lido angled the display again and pulled up a magazine article, essentially a hit piece written to discredit her, with Minerva as one of the people quoted.

“They faked quotes from Dave and Aaron, too, and I was so mad I didn’t even call them about it. I didn’t realize it was fake until your friend got us all talking again.”

“But why?” Minerva asked. “Why would they do this when we were all working together so well?”

“Jane, these people are scared shitless of you. They’re scared to let you run loose and you’re too valuable to kill, so they have to keep you isolated.

“You remember all those old stories about the Captain? About that time he went on the Today show and told the Secretary of Defense to fuck off? When he got a standing ovation for telling off the president? That’s what they’re scared of. They think if they let you off the hook, if you started to really understand what they’ve done to you, they think you’d go rogue, maybe even full villain.”

“That’s absurd,” Minerva scoffed. “I’ve been a hero for twenty years. You know how many villain team up offers I’ve turned down? How many bad guys have tried to win me over by showing me dirt on the Bluestar program? I know we don’t work for angels, but I’m not gonna storm into HDI Tower and start killing people!”

“They don’t know that,” Aaron said.

“And if you wanted to,” Dave asked, “if you wanted to smash in the front door of that tower and leave a trail of bodies all the way to the CEO’s office, could they stop you? Could anything stop you?”

“I’m sure something would stop me,” Minerva said. “Who knows what kind of shit they’ve got in there?”

Dave looked at me. “His file says wonder boy here is pretty strong. Could he stop you?”

“No,” I said immediately. “No fuckin’ way.”

“You know how many heroes have gone villain since I started?” Dave said. “I could name twenty guys from the program who are living in South America right now, living like kings, because they got tired of making one percent off million-dollar sneaker deals. If you did that, it wouldn’t just be a PR loss, it could destabilize a whole country.”

“Absurd,” Minerva said again. “I’ve never made a political statement in my life, and I’m certainly not gonna spend the next fifty years fighting in some South American shithole.”

“They’re not shitholes,” Dave said. “Some of them… I shouldn’t admit this, but I’ve been to a few, and they’re not shitholes. Bolivia, Columbia, Brazil - these are fully-functioning modern states now, and the people who live there - they’re not free but they’re not poor. They have houses and schools and designer shops and free hospitals, all funded with American and European drug profits.”

“Sounds like somebody almost flipped you,” Lido said.

“Mariah Tran invited me down there a couple years ago. She’s bodyguard for an AI programmer who does economic consulting for drug lords. Guys, some of these countries are still using robot labor, and these drug lords have so much money, they’ve moved into nation-building, setting up a guaranteed basic income that’s equivalent to American corp entry level.

“They’ve brought all the forbidden technologies back, and it’s working. They’re using AI to synthesize boutique blends of heroin and cocaine, and they’ve got a million European rich kids hooked on it.

“I turned her down because I’m not gonna work for a fucking drug dealer, but nobody in this country understands what’s really happening down there, and they’ve got entire nations datablocked so we won’t find out.

“If Minerva went to work for one of these guys, she could help him conquer the whole continent, and Tamerlane isn’t the only guy on the planet who knows how to make a robot army.”