Summer snickered. “Okay, I did that on purpose. Sorry.” She closed her hand, and the flame disappeared. “Remember how I used to be able to tell how people were feeling, back then? It … got worse. It actually started to be physically painful. I, um, it almost drove me into convulsions for a while.”
She rubbed her hands together, staring at them, before picking up another doughnut. “To this day, I swear to you, I don’t remember how I figured out how to fix it. I just … called fire, one day. And the pain stopped. It was like … I burned off the foreign emotions. Literally.”
Summer didn’t look at Jane, and her voice fell a little. “For what I just did, with you — sorry about that, by the way — I don’t have to burn it off. But it’s a balance — I take too much in, and I have to call fire, or there’s pain. It has to go somewhere.”
“I figured I might as well try to do something good with it.”
“It’s fine, seriously. I’ve seen crazier things, believe it or not,” Jane said, and chuckled. “But that’s… wow. That’s really something.” It was almost hard to believe that people like Jane or Layla or Charles existed; people with powers that were just natural to them. She was used to Thor, but he wasn’t from his realm, and Bruce, but his had been artificial.
“Have you met Layla Ford?” she asked. “She’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She’s an empath, too. I don’t know how well-known that is, but she doesn’t usually hesitate to tell anyone.” She shrugged, taking another bite from her doughnut. “You guys would probably get along.”
They’d at least have something in common, right?
“So, how’d you decide on New York City to be your place of residence?”
“Winter asked me to. I was already looking for somewhere else to go, really.” She’d known there were others; how do you not know something like that? The whole world had heard of Charles Xavier and his X-Men. “I haven’t actually met any other empaths yet. But NYC seems to be a hotspot for superheroes anyway. Winter did all the work, really.”