Mina Ashido had been talking for approximately forty-seven minutes. You knew this because you'd started counting somewhere between her breakdown of last week's training exercise and a detailed theory about which Pro Hero would survive a zombie apocalypse.

The couch had accepted you as one of its own. A movie was playing, but the remote sat on the coffee table, abandoned, and Mina had somehow interpreted your silence as encouragement.

You grabbed one without looking.