"...just like you, to come to an official meeting in your underwear," Liz muttered, her upturned nose, pursed lips and grimace of disgust reserved for when one stepped on something unclean on the sidewalk.

  "It's a swimsuit, Debate Girl," I shot back with a fond smile. After all the horrors we've had to face in the past year, schoolyard banter brought back memories of home, of a life enemies and monsters had destroyed. I wondered if Liz, too, felt as I did or if she still was the sour, annoying girl she'd always been instead of being irrevocably changed by the ordeal. Then I decided it did not matter either way. "Besides, why would clothes matter?" I tapped a finger next to my right eye. "X-ray vision. To my eyes everyone might as well be naked."

  "Not if I ri-"

  "OK, stop," Mandy put her foot down both figuratively and literally, the air crackling with magical power at her annoyance. "You can have your usual headbutting after the meeting."

  "Of course you would support your best friend," Liz scowled, the black metal threads making up her clothes gleaming blacker than black for a split second. "She doesn't even take things seriously when the fate of the world is at stake, why should we put up with her antics?"

  "First, I had no idea what this meeting was about. Still haven't, really." I flicked my eyes to Anne who was feigning surprise and mild confusion. "I was taking a well-deserved vacation from monster fights and public appearances when I was informed. That was three minutes ago."

  "The meeting is about the devolving global situation and rising threats," Jerry said and with a wave of his arm I was fairly sure he did not need the floor shifted, metal rising out of it to form a fifteen-foot-wide round table with seven chairs around it. While the table itself looked solid, complex electronics extended throughout its bulk while the chairs were made out of finely woven metal mesh, both flexible and soft to the touch without compromising much on resilience. "All of us have noticed the increasing number and scope of villain attacks, right?"

  "Define 'villain', young man," General Rinaker challenged as he took a seat. "The nature of geopolitics and divisions between nations means that one country's hero can be and often is another's villain. The world is shades of grey and not easily divided into two neat, easily identifiable categories, however much we've liked it to." His usual horn pipe appeared on his lips and lit itself as if by magic. "Defining who our common enemies are would be a good first step in this impromptu get-together."

  "I'll take this challenge," I told the old man then vaulted over my chosen seat from behind, using a touch of Proximakinesis to send myself into the seat back-first. "A villain is any super who initiates more suffering to grow powers, rather than using any other foundation."

  "Wouldn't that make you a villain then?" Liz asked, taking her place in the table after Anne, Mandy and Jerry follow the General and me. "You do punch a lot of people in the face."

  "But I neither start the conflict, nor is the conflict itself what empowers me." In fact it was pretty much the opposite, stopping conflicts and averting threats and generally making things better or preventing them from becoming worse that pushed me and those I helped to improve. "There are so many themes to embrace, countless other forms and ways to use magic. Why do we have to continue the one the Invaders gave us as a Trojan Horse?"

  "Can we have a clarification on the subject?" the General asked. "According to government analysts all powers seem to grow through some association with violence, though there have been several edge cases. You're saying that is not what happens?"

  "That is what the Invaders intended to happen," because what better way to have your cake and eat it if to oppose you the locals had to become like you in the end? "Mavethan magic grows by violence, so fighting them and their monsters let it grow in our world. We - all the survivors - saw supernatural monsters so we knew the supernatural existed. We fought the first, weak monsters and survived so the conditions for magical growth were satisfied. We yearned for better ways to fight the monsters, so the magic provided. Thus both the idea and the method that violence gets you magic spread." I shook my head. "But we don't have to embrace it. We can reject the idea, believe in and ask for something other than better ways to be violent."

  "How does that work, exactly?" the old man looked from me, to Liz, to the others. "Because while we see some outliers, all the evidence the government has gathered still points towards conflict."

  "That evidence is probably skewed both by the prevalence of the Mavethan method and a lack of understanding," Amanda began to explain. "Unlike with physics, what you do with magic or how you do it is irrelevant. What matters is effort and belief. If someone believed they were a space alien and put extraordinary effort into it while interacting with magic, they'd gain abilities related to that theme." My red-headed best friend lit a fire in the upturned palm of her hand and then made it dance. "I always believed in the New Age stuff and liked fantasy stories very much, thus my powers developed into an overtly magical, elemental theme, for example. What skews your analysts' results is two things. First, all of us started with the Mavethan theme even if we changed afterwards. The very reason the Mavethans use it is that it's so easy to spread during their invasions. And second, when you get powers most mundane activities become very easy while fighting other supers and monsters still takes lots of effort." The magical flame faded.

  " If your analysts want to see power growth beyond violence they have to start with a super that has changed their theme. Then they must get them to pursue goals inside said theme that would require great effort." She pointed at herself, Jerry, me and Anne. "Magic, supertech, heroics, knowledge and defense, for us supers our themes are fundamental for our growth, but from an outsider's perspective it is our actions that are visible, not what said themes might be. I still don't know what you and Liz base your powers on, General, though I have my suspicions. Beliefs and motivations are not as easy to see from the outside."

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Interesting. It would be difficult to get the researchers to focus on something other than combat applications, for obvious reasons," Rinaker mused, rubbing his fingers against his narrow chin pensively. "It does complicate our definition of heroes and villains, though."

  "Does it?" Anne spoke up for the first time. "Who started the conflict should be obvious in most cases. Yet even when it's not, what a super believes in and wants to use their powers for decides those powers." My younger sister looked at all of us in challenge. "When forced to confront monsters, all I wanted to do was to avoid violence, know how to escape them, prevent them from finding me. My first power was deflecting awareness. Had I fought them it would have been something else. Had I wanted, asked for another method of dealing with them, my first ability would not have been defensive nor the abilities that followed so focused on utility outside monster battles." Between one moment and the next, the futuristic, sterile environment of the space station was gone, replaced by a tropical beach. We could feel the grains of sand beneath our feet, feel the warmth of the sun on our faces, hear the sound of splashing waves, smell the tang of salt in the air and be touched by countless droplets of cold seawater on every inch of bare skin.

  Then my little sister blinked and we were back on a space station orbiting the planet. Whatever this power might have started as, sensory manipulation at that level definitely had its uses in a fight. "So when I see someone who has and uses abilities that enslave others, it's safe to deal with them like the slavers they are." The gleaming sword of metallic crystal strapped to her side flashed silver for a split-second before returning to its normal state. "And thus when someone proposes to you a project that would grow and harvest people to make superpowered monsters, you'll know to throw them in the deepest, darkest pit you can find regardless of whether they claim they are doing it to help their country."

  "Ugh, don't remind me," Liz grimaced. "I suggested just that when that joint project with Canada was proposed. Nobody listened."

  "To be fair to both our and the Canadian government, that committee had been infiltrated," the General added almost as an afterthought, as if a plot to produce city-busting Kaiju hadn't been a big deal. "When the situation is bad enough even the worst ideas begin to look good on paper and make no mistake; the global situation is getting worse."

  "You don't have to tell us. Before the Wizard was finally captured we'd stopped dozens of his ritual summonings. One of our main goals in building this station was having more options to find and intervene in similar situations before they exploded," Jerry put in his two cents. "The station's sensors is what keyed us into the increasing frequency and magnitude of superpowered events. Not just those we and our students dealt with, but others across the globe."

  "Of course you can track supers globally," General Rinaker said with a mirthless chuckle. "What else? Is this station armed with weapons of mass destruction against all outer space treaties to date?"

  "We don't need weapons of mass destruction, we are weapons of mass destruction," I interrupted. "Besides, I'm pretty sure the treaties apply to states - which we aren't and I, at least, don't want to be - and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons while the warheads I can see here are all loaded with protonium." I smirked. "They aren't nuclear weapons, that exotic atom doesn't even have a nucleus. Plus I'd bet Jerry built them just for the Star Trek reference."

  "No bet," both Mandy and Liz said at the same time, then the brunette frowned while the redhead smiled like the cat that got the canary which, in a way, she had.

  "This is a disaster waiting to happen," the General said with a shake of his head. "Both governments and the people in the street don't really grasp the full ramifications of superpowers and those of us working from within the system have been working ceaselessly to make it so. Everyone has an idea of what nukes can do though. If supers are equated with nukes there will be a lot more panic than there is now."

  "How does that work?" I asked because I was curious. "I mean, Florida was turned into a monster-infested wasteland. I've used nuclear-equivalent firepower several times myself. How can people be kept in the dark despite evidence to the contrary?"

  "Evidence? My dear, until recently ten percent of our civilians would say we faked the Moon landings when asked... and that's with their education and our entire scientific community saying otherwise. With every government on Earth desperate to prevent the populace from descending into anarchy or the spread of dark magic and many supers developing concealment or misinformation powers themselves, evidence so far has been significantly discredited." He looked at me with exasperation. "Besides, it was your own public appearances that let us sell the misinformation, both your defense of the United Nations and your dealings with the press. The public has many videos of you fighting tank-sized opponents or engaging with individuals, one video of you apparently struggling with a building-sized monster, and a pair of very big explosions from very far away. The prevalent theories are that you held the monsters in place until the Navy or Air Force could nuke them. It certainly isn't within your powers of flying brick and limited telekinesis to cause nuclear explosions - that would be absurd." He scowled. "Which is why any rumors or worse, evidence to the contrary must not get out."

  "Information control to avoid global panic is important but could we get back to the main issue?" Mandy said testily.

  "Which would be?" General Rinaker challenged again. "I believe you're seriously underestimating the importance of maintaining order and need-to-know. You youngsters didn't live through the Cold War. You don't know how close we got to a global nuclear war and how information and communication were the keys to avoiding it... and the situation we're in today is worse."

  "True," Jerry agreed, "but during the Cold War you didn't have any factions that wanted to destroy human civilization and dance on its irradiated ashes."

  "If you're talking about the Everymen, they aren't that big a threat," Liz countered. "Despite their willingness to attack governments and use human wave tactics, they simply lack the power to be a global threat. Not now that our government has supers of its own as well as means to contain their members without killing them."

  "Appearances can be deceiving. We believed the same about the Wizard until he organized an attack against us," Mandy said. "Thanks to his capture by Anne and subsequent interrogation, some of our worst suspicions were proven correct. Villains are cooperating on a global scale and it is neither a new thing nor a small effort."

  "We have a villain league moving against us and they must be dealt with before it's too late..."