Misdirection Ability

From the Experimentation Power Source: "When a nearby hero in the Yellow or Red zone would take damage, Defend against that damage by rolling your single
[power] die, then redirect any remaining damage to a nearby minion of your choice."

So if Hero A gets hit for 8 damage, Misdirection Hero uses this Ability and rolls a 5, blocking 5 damage.  3 damage remains.  The Ability says that that damage gets applied to a nearby Minion.

1) This means that Hero A takes no damage, right? It seems like this is a very powerful Defense Response.

2) Presuming 1) is correct, what happens if there is no minions? We've been playing it that the damage just evaporates, as it doesn't say the remaining damage *may* be redirected.  It seems it must be redirected, but if it has no target, it just goes away (or perhaps narratively causes some property damage).

However, having seen the Ability used against some 15-16 point villain attacks, I started to wonder if the Ability was too good.  (As GM, I didn't care that it was "too good"; I just wanted to make sure I was applying the rules correctly.

Thoughts?

I apologize; I didn't use the Search feature first because I find it generates mediocre results on this forum.  However, I see that this has been discussed before.  A couple people (MindWanderer among them, I think) agreed that it prevents all the damage going through regardless of whether a minion is present.  Any new thoughts or insights on this?

No new thoughts, but I agree that the damage would just disolve in most cases. Depending on the character, if the ability is something like a power suit overloading and the electricity *must* go somewhere, then going into the environment might make sense. Although not really following the rules but I think its up to the GM to create "narrative" rules, it might make sense to invoke a minor twist here.