“You’re trying to make me like you again,” the older hero said, massaging their temples. “Try to relax into the situation and focus on holding your powers inside yourself rather than pushing them outward.”
“I’m sorry!” the young heroine cried. “It’s just you’re so important and I’m super nervous and-”
“And you want to impress me, I know.” The hero smiled kindly. “It’s okay kid, I know how hard this can be, but we can’t have you unwittingly going around forcing everyone to like you. It;s not ethical and it will hurt you in the long term. Now let’s wipe the slate clean and try to have this conversation again, alright?”The hero gasped, bending over double. That much pain, that much anger and fury and betrayal-
They looked up, expecting it to be emanating from the villain, but they were a blank, depthless pool, entirely unreadable. It was only when another hero touched down beside them that the empath recognised the source.
The anger pulsed, and the empath dry-heaved. They were going to be sick.“The interesting thing about you,” the villain murmured, “is how strong your power is, and how easily it makes you crumple. A little flash of how I feel and,” the villain let some of their anger flash across their mind and the hero flinched back, “and you’re distracted. Any more and it incapacitates you. Quite the irony that one so strong could be so very weak.”