A/N: Finally— the story of when and why Joviana first conceived her dislike of super heroism.

It was in the car on the way back that it happened: Janet narrowed her eyes, looked at me searchingly and said, "You know, I've been trying to think of who it is you've been reminding me of, and I've finally remembered. There was this girl I knew, who I hung out with during the summer for several years. It isn't so much that you look like her—although you have similar coloring—it's your sense of humor. You remind me of how she used to be—God, I haven't thought about her in ages."

Fortunately my career as a professional minion had prepared me for that. I assumed an open, politely interested expression, and listened like mad underneath it.

"One of those people you just drop out of touch with?" sympathized Jen. "That's happened to me a lot since I became the She-Hulk."

"No—just out-grew. I saw her a few years ago, and I hardly recognized her—but she recognized me." Janet gave a laugh. "It was one of those battles that goes all over the place, and we—the Avengers—wound up fighting it out with the X-Men. You know how it is. We would up in this supermarket parking lot, and Hank—my ex-husband" she explained. "picked up this car and threw it at Colossus, and both the car and the man wound up sailing through the market's front window. As it turned out, my friend worked there—as a cashier! Worse luck, it was her car. She recognized me—this was before I came out of the hero closet—and to get her to keep quiet about my identity, I met her for lunch the next day, and paid her for her car. She didn't have superhero insurance."

That was correct, as far as it went. Superhero insurance is mandatory in major urban areas, but in my part of Pennsylvania, it was optional.

Janet continued. "It was terrible to see the person she'd become. She was overweight—dressed in these horrible Wal-Mart clearance rack clothes—and worst of all, dull. It was depressing. The oddest part, though, was that she disappeared not long after that. Without a trace. It's one of those things that happens now and then. She graduated college, got a little money together, and went off to see America. No one has ever found out what happened to her."

"Did you not investigate?" I inquired. "Is that not the done thing, among superheroes?"

"No." said Janet, briefly. "Believe me, the last thing she would have wanted would be for me to go around acting like a superhero on account of her. Although…"

At least that part of what I said over lunch when she paid me for my car that day had sunk in. She really hadn't liked what I said to her then.

"Although what?" I probed. "Don't leave us hanging."

"She had this psychotic mother. That's not an exaggeration, either. One of the things she used to do was leave the bathroom door open when she was using it—and I mean during everything. I won't go into further detail. I genuinely think that woman was mentally ill, dangerously so. I've sometimes thought she had something to do with her daughter's disappearance."

"You mean—murdered her?" asked Sue.

"Maybe. But nothing was ever discovered. I don't think she was ever seriously suspected. She was a very clever actress, very good at acting normal."

I didn't like to hear that, but then I never liked to hear about any of the ways I resembled my birth mother.

"You can drop me here. I've just spotted somebody I know." said Jen. I informed the driver, and he pulled over.

Jen called "Hey, Matt!"

I saw a red-haired man with dark glasses and a cane, the red-tipped cane of the blind, turn his face in her direction. I know who most of the costumed adventurers are. I know their secret identities. I knew who he was: Matt Murdock. Like Jen, he was a lawyer, and also, like Jen, a superhero—Daredevil. The blindness wasn't an act. His other senses, augmented by exposure to radioactivity, were amplified to the point where they were super-powers.

"Jennifer?" he queried.

"Yes!" She got her purchases together and got out of the embassy car.

"If you can drop me over on Park Avenue, by the Guggenheim, that would be great." said Janet. "I have an appointment to arrange the use of their building to debut my next collection."

As she got out, bags in hand, she suddenly leaned over and said, "I know it seems impossible to you now, but if it goes bad—your marriage, I mean—if he abuses you, verbally or physically, you have friends you can call on. I hope it doesn't happen to you—but it did to me."

That was another thing I knew. Her ex-husband had first hit her with words, and then with his hand. "Thank you, Janet." Because of that friend-like concern for my well-being, I forgave her for what she had said of the old me.

Like most of the world, I used to be dazzled by superheroes. I was as willfully stupid about them as everybody else. Then, as Janet had said, one day the costumed adventurer Goliath threw my car through the front window of my workplace, and suddenly they weren't glamorous any more.

I remember the sound of glass breaking, of fiberglass and metal impacting with the bank of checkout lines at the front of the store. I know that people must have been screaming, but my world had altered somehow, as I thought 'That's my car.'

It and the X-man Colossus came to a rest in a 6-foot high pyramid of store-brand sodas, which burst open and sprayed warm sticky fizz everywhere. I remember the sound of the soda hissing and dripping. One can rolled away from the massacre of its fellows and came to a stop by my foot. My cash register had been demolished. It wasn't there any more. The car—my car—had removed it in its passing, not three feet in front of me.

If I had been standing up close to it, I would have been killed.

I remember the noise made by the bits of glass that tinkled as they broke and fell. I do not remember any sound made by a human being. The world had gotten very remote and far-away. My face tingled as if I had been out in the cold for a long time, and had only just gone inside.

I was slipping into clinical shock, that was what was happening. I sat down on the floor quite abruptly.

I don't know how much time passed—shock will do that to you—but I was called back to the land of the living when I heard a voice I knew.

I scrambled to my feet to see the Wasp, Thor, and Goliath talking to a police officer, apologizing for the mess. The fog of shock burned away as I recognized her profile, despite the mask she was wearing, despite the costume.

"Janet?" I asked, stupidly.

Her head snapped around on her neck as she turned to look at me. "Are you missing somebody named Janet?" she temporized, walking over to me.

I had to admire the way she said, "Some people are out in the parking lot. Your Janet is probably there. Are you hurt anywhere? Can you walk?" She slipped her arm around me, as if to hold me up. "Not now! Not here!" she hissed, under her voice.

"That's my car." I moaned. "What am I going to do? I can't afford another one, and I don't have superhero insurance!"

"I'll buy you another one, only don't let on you know who I am! I'll meet you in Sycamore Park tomorrow, at noon, okay?" She 'helped' me out of the wreckage of the store to an ambulance outside, where she turned me over to the paramedics. They were efficient people who determined that there was nothing wrong with me that a cup of strong, sweet tea wouldn't fix.

After I rested a while, I took a bus home.

The next day, at noon, I met Janet by the main entrance to Sycamore Park, a place where we had often gone during our shared summers.

"Does the Ritz still make good hamburgers?" she asked, so we bought lunch from the same old place we used to go, taking our paper sacks with us down the twisting path that led to the duck pond.

It was spring, and there were fuzzy little yellow and brown mallard ducklings following their mothers, and bigger grey Canadian goose goslings nibbling grass as their parents kept guard, hissing at any human that came too close to their babies. We sat on a bench under an enormous weeping willow tree, whose green and silver switches brushed the top of my head.

"First of all, I want to say I'm sorry for what happened yesterday. We try to avoid populated areas when we can."

"When and how did you become a part of this 'we'?" I asked, without preamble. "I thought you wanted to become a fashion magazine editor, not a superhero." I had not been able to sleep the night before. I kept seeing my car fly through the air three feet in front of me. At least I hadn't had to get up for work that morning. The store was closed for repairs.

"I did, but this is more important."

"More important." I repeated. I wasn't hungry. I tore bits of bread off of my bun and crumbled them on the ground in front of me—soon I had a small crowd of ducks, geese, and one hopeful squirrel competing for the fragments.

"Yes. Do I have your word that you won't reveal my identity to anyone? And that you won't repeat what I might tell you today?"

"Sure." I said, glumly.

"You know that my father passed away? It wasn't a natural death. It was murder, and his killer was someone the law couldn't touch…"

She explained how her father, the scientist Vernon Van Dyne, had been killed by a creature from the planet Kosmos, and how, in her grief, she had sworn to avenge his death. She went to a colleague of his, a Doctor Henry Pym, and told him all about it.

I got the distinct impression that she had already had a crush on 'Hank' before that, so going to him was as much to advance a personal agenda as it was for her father.

Doctor Pym had a answer for her. He had come up with this special serum that would make her shrink down to the size of an insect, although she would retain the strength she had as a human. She might gain other powers, too. There was a second serum that would restore her to normal.

"Right." I said at that point in the story. "What was in that serum, anyway?"

"Pym particles." she said, self-importantly.

"And what are they? How does it work? Did he test this stuff first? How many clinical trials did it go through? What's the toxicity rating on it? Is it carcinogenic?"

I fired questions at her, one after another, until she put her hands over her ears and wailed, "I don't know, I don't know!"

She took it, on only his say-so that it was safe. She gained the ability to shrink, she grew little tiny fairy wings, and gained the ability to fire electrical stings from her hands. Thus the Wasp was born.

She told me more—about the adventures, about forming the hero team of the Avengers, and about how she and Hank got married, which she called 'the most romantic thing imaginable.'

He went temporarily insane, devised a new, villainous identity for himself, the Yellowjacket—which he truly believed in—kidnapped Janet, told her he had killed Hank Pym, out of love for her, and proposed marriage to her.

I would have thought that evidence of mental illness on that scale would have put her off, but no. She agreed, knowing full well who he really was, and they were married, after which he came back to himself. They decided to stay married.

"So you don't have a pre-nup to protect you if you should split up." I said. "With your kind of money, you need one."

"Well—no. But it doesn't matter, as we'll never break up. There won't be any divorce."

"Janet—I've been listening to you, and all I can say is that—I don't think I've ever heard any thing so stupid!"

She froze. "How much did your car cost?" she asked, pulling her checkbook out of her purse. "Never mind, I'll just make it ten thousand." She wrote furiously.

"Janet, I'm sorry, but—if you could only hear yourself. You took those substances, not knowing what the long term effects might be, you go around doing nothing but fighting people—and I thought the X-Men were supposed to be the good guys, like the Avengers. What were you doing fighting them? And now the place where I work is half-destroyed, and—."

She handed me the check. "I can see that you don't understand what it is we do, and how important it is." she said, the chill of January in her voice. "But of all the people I know, remembering what you were like growing up, how you always made up the best adventures—I would have thought you would have known in your heart—Never mind."

She got up and walked away from me, very quickly. As she came to the bend in the path, I saw her hand brush across her eyes, as if she wiped away tears.

I looked at the check. I had never had such a large check made out in my name before. I would have liked to rip it up, as a statement to myself and to Janet, but I couldn't afford to.

I wanted to believe in what Janet believed in. I wanted to believe that superheroes were necessary, that what they did was good, and right. I wanted to believe they were needed, to save the world, to protect the weak, to bring truth and justice and apple pie to America and the world.

But it sounded stupid to me. I couldn't get around that.

My smart and pretty friend had taken potentially dangerous substances, without any knowledge of their potential long-term effects, put on a costume, and now went around acting as if she were a human stun gun. She had no other occupation. She had left college and married a man who had a history of serious instability. She did so without securing her money in the case of a break-up. He could claim half of everything if they did. That was stupid.

Superheroes committed crimes in the name of preventing them. They beat people up, often brutally. That would get a cop not only fired, but put on trial, if not convicted. They damaged billions of dollars of property every year. Any ordinary person who did that would face jail time and get sued so badly they'd have to sell their own blood to feed themselves. And they got away with it.

If they wanted to do something for the world, why didn't they fight hunger in Africa, or spend their time in areas of high crime working with at-risk kids so they didn't become criminals, rather than beating them up once they did?

Why were they so idolized? Why were there TV shows reporting on what they did, and where, and to who? Why were there magazines dedicated to them, web-sites, fan clubs?

Why were they even tolerated?

Was I the only person who saw something wrong with the whole thing?

----------------------

A/N: Next chapter—back to Victor, after a stop at the Baxter Building, where Joviana will learn Ben Grimm's opinion of pineapple—and why Sue thinks it is especially important that Jovi and Victor have a good relationship.

Thank you to GothikStrawberry, tiktok, Chantrea Savann, and Madripoor Rose! Big virtual hug!