As Supergirl touched down on her balcony, Cat noticed that she carried two large bags with an appetizing smell.

"Hello, Miss Grant."

"Good evening, Supergirl. Where did you get the food? It smells delicious."

"A tavern called Stephos' on Eivad Street. I thought that since you said you'd be doing most of the talking, you shouldn't have to pay for your dinner as well."

"Thank you. Shall we eat first and talk later?"

"Sure."

For the next few minutes, the two women peacefully enjoyed both their meal and the precarious restfulness between them. When they had finished, Supergirl looked at the mogul.

"I suppose we should begin."

"Yes," Cat said as she handed a sheet of paper to Supergirl. "Here's a transcript of our first meeting. I'd like to start by walking you through it and telling you what was going on in my head as it happened."

"OK."

"Did you know that when you picked up my car, I was speaking to Mr. Olsen on the phone?"

"I didn't know that."

"Well, he told me that my interview with you had already started and that I should look out my window. When I did, I saw the CatCo building logo about twenty feet below me. Please don't ever do that to me again. I'm not a good flyer. So when we landed, I knew it was you, and I was a little irritated with you before I ever got out of the car. Which is why I did something that no wise reporter will ever do. "

"And that was?"

"Two things. The false awe in my voice and deliberately provoking you early in the interview before you had given me much substance. Your responses to my provocations, however, were revealing."

"How so?" Supergirl was intent, curious.

"There were three of them. Each time I provoked you, you reacted quickly, without thinking. Can you remember which of my comments produced that reaction?"

"Yes, first you asked if I wasn't on Superman's level when I told you I hadn't fully mastered freeze breath. Then, you implied I was irresponsible when you asked where I was during the September wildfires. And finally, you asked if I had plans to start a family."

"That's a good memory, you have."

"It was the first time in my life that I talked to a reporter. And I knew it would be a front page story. So I was a little nervous, and I tend to remember times I'm nervous."

"Understandably so." Miss Grant agreed. "But you need to recognize that the next step an alert reporter will take is that he or she will ask what was it about those questions that caused you to react that way. You didn't like being compared unfavorably with Superman, so you reacted with a heat vision blast. And when I asked about starting a family you again took it as an implied comparison to Superman, one you resented. And that implies that you'd been on earth for some time by that point – a point that was reinforced when you implicitly admitted you'd been on earth during last September's wildfires."

"Why did resenting the second comparison to Superman suggest to you that I'd been here for a while?"

"Your answer implied that you are a feminist and you thought I should be one. That implies that you were aware of our cultural considerations. It takes time in a new culture to come to that level of awareness. But that raises a question that someone's going to ask. From what Superman's said, we know Krypton must have exploded thirty-five years ago. But you look little more than twenty."

"If you look at my cousin, you'll notice that he doesn't look his age either. It seems Kryptonians don't visibly age as fast as humans do. So how do I avoid saying more than I want to?"

"Nice dodge, Supergirl. I was asking the implied question of how come you turned up on earth at least twenty-five years after Superman's arrival. Shouldn't you have arrived at the same time? Where have you been? But your answer illustrates a key point you should remember: while your interviewer gets to pick the questions, you get to pick the answers."

"What does that mean?"

"The best way to keep reporters from seeing when a question hits too close to home is never to react to a question but to develop the habit of always thinking though what you'll say before you answer it. A second thing you should do is to figure out the message that you want the reporter's audience to get and then stay 'on-message' if you know that term."

"I know it: I've read a few political biographies," the Girl of Steel replied.

"OK then, that's the basic lesson in dealing with what you say. If you think through what you'll say before you say it and stay on-message, usually limiting what you say to the then present incident, you should minimize the trouble you can get into by careless words. And this approach can be helpful when you're dealing with other people too, like work colleagues."

"I see."

But let's look at what someone can infer from some of your actions," Cat continued.

"What do you mean?"

"Take your rescue of Flight 237, for example."

Supergirl nodded.

"You didn't wear your costume for that one."

"So?" Supergirl asked.

"So, it's a fair deduction that, at the very least, it caught you unprepared to use your powers that night."

"At the very least?"

"I suspect, that it's more likely, judging from your reaction to my interview questions about the earthquake and the fires," Cat replied, "that you had no plans to use your powers in such a way."

"I see," Supergirl replied.

"Which begs the question. What was so special about that plane? Or was there something special about a particular passenger?"

The Girl of Steel thought for a moment, then she replied.

"I don't mind telling you. And if you want to do an interview after this about how my first few months doing this stuff have gone, you can include this answer in it if you like. That rescue was pure chance. I just happened to be walking in the street when the plane flew overhead, and I saw its second engine explode. And I realized at that moment that there was a difference between that situation and the earthquake and the fires and other similar events. Unlike those situations, where other people were already helping by the time I heard about them, in the case of that plane, there was nobody else who could help who could get there in time. And I realized that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I walked on and did nothing. I just had to try to help."

"But why change your mind? Why keep on helping people in trouble?"

"If you look at the incidents I've taken a hand in, you'll see that most of them were situations where nobody else with the right skill set was available or could get there quickly."

"I see. But you should also know that an alert reporter could also easily find out that the NCPD has offered you a job, as has the FBI."

'And why is that significant?" Supergirl was puzzled.

"You need to eat. Therefore you need to pay bills. And so, if you're not working for the NCPD or the FBI, you are working in a day job that is not law enforcement. What kind of day job will it be? A little thought tells me you can't possibly be a hospitality worker or a retail clerk. Or a hospital nurse, a doctor, a teacher or an accountant, because you couldn't get away from such positions to do what you do as Supergirl. No, it's far more likely that you are either self-employed or an office worker in a large corporation."

"Why do you say that?" Supergirl asked.

"Three reasons. First, self-employed people. The often work alone: many times they can set their own schedules and that means they can get away at any time, and it's not a problem so long as they deliver their tasks by their deadlines. They can also set up their media sources to reflect a broad coverage. And that's important because you haven't considered what someone can deduce from you quick arrival at incident scenes."

"What do you mean, Miss Grant?"

In the last six weeks, you responded to fifteen incidents within three minutes of those incidents first being reported either on the police band or some breaking news report. The non-police sources included CatCo, the local ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox affiliates and four independents. That's quite a broad range of sources. It suggests that you're either a news junkie or someone who has access to someplace like the CatCo newsroom where all of those sources are monitored continually."

"I do keep tabs on what's going on in National City," Supergirl murmured.

"That said, I suspect you are probably not self-employed. More than most of us, I think you need to be with people, to be accepted as one of us. And if that's true, then office workers and administrative assistants are the people who can most easily disappear for a few minutes without causing a fuss. They take breaks, the run errands on other floors; they solve problems. Perfect cover for you to save the day somewhere, and return, all within a few minutes. Such a job would have a few challenges, but they can be managed. Unless you run into a few monkey wrench situations."

"What do you mean?"

"What happens if your office is monitoring the news sources I mentioned and one or more of your coworkers or your manager notices that you are always absent when Supergirl shows up?"

"That could present a problem," Supergirl replied.

"Even worse might be slipping up and using one or more of your powers in front of them."

"And I'd need some fast talking to get out of that." Supergirl suddenly realized that her boss was going somewhere with this.

"And you'd need some fast talking to get out of that. But an even worse thing can happen, and you have to make sure it doesn't."

"What's that, Miss Grant?"

"Whatever you do you can't afford to let any of your colleagues who know you as their colleague Ellen Earthling see you at close range as Supergirl. If you have to save them from something, make certain that they don't get a good look at your face."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because of that little scar by your left eyebrow. If you wear glasses, they'll distract people from it, but only if someone is looking straight at you. If that somebody's looking down, say your manager standing by your desk as you sit there, the scar will be plainly visible."

As a deeply shaken Supergirl opened her mouth, Cat raised her hand.

"Don't say a word. I'm not finished yet. I meant what I said about wanting to help you. There is a distinction between the words 'guess' and 'know' and I do not want to know what you are about to tell me. If you work in a large business, practicing such restraint now will be good practice for keeping your own manager in the dark, something you may need to keep on doing for a whole variety of reasons, which I'm sure you don't need me to elucidate."

Supergirl was clearly thinking hard, digesting what Cat was and was not saying. "You're right; I don't. So how do I minimize the fallout from my actions or my appearance?"

"The first thing we do," Cat replied, "is to set up an interview that covers your first few months in the hero business. Once we get your reason for saving flight 237 on record, nobody's going to look further. Can we do that tomorrow night? And second, you'll just have to take care who sees you close up from certain angles when you are out and about as Supergirl."

"I think tomorrow night will work for our interview. And thank you very much, Miss Grant, for suggesting that we have this conversation."

Cat smiled. "I'm always glad to help."