[Video transcript begin]

A husband frantically searches the ruins of his home. “Where is my wife?” He says in Pashto. “Please, help me! I think she’s under-”

The camera pans to the left. A man appears, naked from the waist up. There is a tattoo on his back that reads, ‘Light of God’. He takes one stride, closing a hundred feet in a second. He smiles.

“Bow!” He shouts. “Bow before the prophet!”

Light exudes from his shoulders like a wavering torch. Scanning graphics highlight the power, labeling it as ‘Est. category 5 psyfire manipulation, 76% confidence’.

“Please help me!” The husband pleads. He points to the remains of his home. “I-I have money. It’s all under there.”

“I don’t want the currency of an inferior species. The chosen of God have been paid eternal. All of you! Come by my feet!”

A crowd forms reluctantly around the gifted man. An explosion behind him pulls his attention away. Approximately two hundred yards away, over the hill of a rubble heap, a woman in a tight suit and short cape appears with civilians on her back.

“This man bothering you guys?” She calls out. She puts down the civilians.

“You dare, American, to meddle in our affair-?”

ERROR

WIND FORCE EXCEEDING DRONE LIMITATIONS

STABILIZING

The crowd is screaming. The gifted man is sputtering, unable to speak. He is vomiting blood. A fist is protruding from his chest.

“Don’t worry,” the woman says to the crowd. “I’m here.” Her other hand penetrates the man’s chest. With both hands she tears his ribcage into messy halves. Skin, muscle, and sinew comes apart. A psyfire plume escapes the chest cavity, showering the area in hot bits of bone and viscera.

The husband is crying out in agony. A shard of bone had landed on his wrist. The fire is spreading along his arm.

“Sorry,” the woman says, making a sympathetic face. She grabs the man by the elbow and severs his forearm in one slash of her hand. The crowd is running. The husband shuffles backwards on the ground, crying, leaving a trail of blood from the stump.

“Wish we had a laser or something,” the woman says. "To cauterize that, I mean."

“Please, American, no hurt. Please.”

“I’m not going to hurt you!”

“Please no more. No hurt anymore.”

“Wah? Psyfire is very hard to put out. I had to do that or else you’ll burn! And-” Her eyes turn to the camera. “Are you checking up on me? Fuck off. Piece of shit fucking come here.”

ERROR

CHASSIS PRESSURE EXCEEDING-

[Video transcript end]

Whitworth turned in his chair away from the presentation screen. His fingers formed a contemplative tent.

“So Victory,” he said, “how was Afghanistan?”

Victory leaned back in her chair. She was out of uniform, wearing a biker’s jacket and ripped denim.

“Listen,” she said, “for the record I got the man’s wife out from under there.”

“What record? You crushed the surveillance drone.”

“You know how I feel about this KGB shit, Director.”

“Hey,” Sokolov said, “America does it just as much as Russia, or China for that matter. Probably more.”

“You need to trust your operatives,” Victory said.

“That was never how this worked,” Whitworth said. “Our eyes are for quality assurance.”

“I don’t like how we work.”

“Neither do I. But the world’s more complicated than ever. You need to stick to the script. The clean-up for your move was costly.”

“They weren’t equipped to handle a Supe,” Victory said, leaning forward. “Let alone a cat-5. I had to step in. It’s what heroes do.”

“It is,” Whitworth said. “By God it was the right thing to do. But it isn’t what you should have done. Now they know of the American presence there, and are one step away from narrowing it down to M.A.G.E.”

“Director, we are everywhere. Every nation knows that.”

“No. Every nation suspects we are everywhere. Now they might know.”

“Why don’t you just mind wipe them?” Victory asked, throwing up her hands.

Whitworth took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “Because an equivalent or more powerful psychic can detect when a mind has been touched by another psychic. Look, our abilities are complicated.” He sighed. “Alright. I’m confident you won’t do this again.”

“Whatever.” Victory stood from her seat. Her chair rattled from her momentum. “I’m dismissed right? I have an appearance scheduled for the freshmen’s first class.”

“Yes. Dismissed.”

The double doors to the meeting room slammed shut. Whitworth relaxed. Sokolov sat heavily in his chair.

“My asshole was clenching a bit there,” he said.

“Victory is harmless,” Whitworth said. “Her heart is in the right place.”

“That psyfire guy’s heart, however, isn’t.”

“No. We have a lot of work to do. We need to see how deep their trenches go.”

“I can work with the intel we got from the operation,” Sokolov said. “I’ll get back to you.”

---

The lecture hall was abuzz with excitable energy. It wasn’t often M.A.G.E could schedule one of their most famous alumni for a talk.

“Do you think she has time for autographs?”

“I wonder how she looks in person.”

“Think she’d go for a younger guy?”

And other questions freely blended into noise. The talking would continue until the lecturer entered the room and stood onto the podium. He cleared his throat, and introduced himself.

“Good morning. I’m Samuel Osprey. Call me whatever. This will be a combined course that covers the Consolidated Enhancile Operating Regulation within North America. Pay attention and you will know what heroes are legally allowed to do. It will also cover things like Super Ethics. Wouldn’t have called it that myself, but it’s a cute name I guess.

“I know none of you care about that right now. We have with us today a key member of Federal Flight, four time Supreme Tournament champion, and Civil Servant of the Highest Distinction; but you may all know her as the savior of New Langshir. Please welcome, Victory.”

There was a standing ovation as she walked into the hall. Lyssa stood as well, if only to not appear out of place.

“Wonder if her hair looks like that all the time,” Penny said. “She looks like a shampoo model.”

“Almost as though it is illegal for heroes to appear without product all over their body,” Amelia remarked. “If it were not for costumes, heroes would look like formula racers.”

They both laughed, the sounds reduced to muffled breaths in Lyssa’s ears. She stared at Victory. To the rest of the enamored class the hero was six and a half feet of worship. Lyssa saw the woman who had leapt into air, shattering one of Rachminau’s meteors into a thousand pieces. Lyssa couldn’t hear her speech to the class over the memory boiling in her skull.

Victory. That was her name. When the day was over Lyssa looked her up. She was one of the most highly lauded heroes in the country. Forums routinely called her the number one hero in America.

“No, no,” Victory responded once in an interview. “We want to save and improve lives. What is the point of arbitrary metrics? Are we some pretty boys-and-girls idol group, or are we heroes? People don’t have billboards with number one policeman or firefighter on them.” She laughed, a radiant beacon of humor and PR. “No. Doing good isn’t a competition. Save one life or a thousand, you are still a lifesaver.”

Lyssa shut her laptop in an abrupt movement. A knock sounded on her bedroom door. She took a deep breath and opened it. Penny stood there with two bottles of beer.

“You cannot be busy on day one,” Penny said.

“No. I’m not. Let’s drink,” Lyssa said, a smile beginning on her lips. Her mood was already lightening.

They sat on the balcony of their unit, watching the orange sun fill the gaps of the flowering trees in the gardens.

“I noticed you were in a bad mood all day,” Penny said.

“It’s… nothing.”

“Okay.” Penny took a sip, looking off into the distance, waiting.

“When Victory kicked that meteor seven years ago,” Lyssa said, “one of the pieces sliced through the lower floors of the apartment my family was living in. The whole thing came down. My mother died. My father… wasn’t home.”

“Oh.”

“I managed seven years avoiding hero media. I didn’t even know her name, but I recognize her. Now I know her legacy. She’s standing there at the top of our field.”

“Why did you want to be a hero?”

“I don’t know. There were financial reasons. My father got into an accident. His will left me enough to get by for a couple years.” Lyssa shook her head. “I don’t even have control over my abilities. I could more easily hurt someone than help them. Entering M.A.G.E was one of the most selfish decisions I’ve ever done.”

“Lyssa, everyone has a personal reason for joining. It’s not selfish.”

“Isn’t it? How many people do you think became a hero for glory? Fame?”

Penny leaned back in her chair.

“A lot,” she said.

“How many sign up to chase Victory? Trying to be the new ‘number one hero’?”

“Also a lot.”

“Hero work will eventually have us hurt people. What-” She thought of the burning insurance building. The man she murdered. The image was painful. “-what does it say about people who see glory in that?”

“Do you think people sign up to be a hero just to hurt people?”

“I’m saying heroes are the kind of people who want to be at the top in a line of work where they know they would have to.”

Penny smiled. She finished her beer and stood.

“You need more drink,” she said. She came back with two more bottles. “You're in the hero industry now. What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Lyssa said. “But I want to be different. I don’t want to be a walking shampoo model.”

Penny laughed heartily.

“I’ll be rooting for you.”