[ It takes Cisco a few minutes to get past the reflexive wave of awfulness he feels when Charles calls his powers an 'extraordinary gift'. He's already on-edge from deciding to tell someone about his powers, and the similarity to what Eobard said to him in the pipeline is conspicuous. There was a time when that unfortunate wording would have been enough to make Cisco drop the conversation and never look back. But he has enough distance now to push back against that irrational impulse. He tells himself it is a perfectly normal and even a perfectly kind thing for someone to say. Charles means gift as in talent, and psychic or not, he can't possibly know anything about the context, given the question he asks next. So Cisco's response is somewhat delayed, but not defensive. ]
it's not actually all that useful, since i can't control what i see or when i have the visions, which can be extremely inconvenient. like, it's not so bad if i'm just in the lab or whatever, but it's happened a couple times in life and death situations. zoning out, even if it's just for a few seconds, is a really bad idea when someone's firing a gun at you y'know?
i don't know what you'd call many. we're called metahumans, where i'm from. a couple years ago a particle accelerator exploded and released a wave of dark matter energy that changed some people in the city. but i don't really have any way of knowing how many of us there are, though. at least 1% of the population, for sure. maybe a lot more. people don't go around saying they're metas much.
[ Cisco cannot help himself: he sounds a second text full of questions, earnest and a little desperate. ]
so you hear other people's thoughts? for real? do you have to be near to them or is it anyone, anywhere? like you can't read my mind right now, right? how'd you get your powers? do you know how to close off your mind? do you think you could teach me to do it?
[ Oh, that was a lot, wasn't it? ]
uh, sorry for the wall of questions. i've met plenty of metas, but never really anyone with powers like ours before. stuff involving... i guess esp or whatever you wanna call it.
no subject
it's not actually all that useful, since i can't control what i see or when i have the visions, which can be extremely inconvenient. like, it's not so bad if i'm just in the lab or whatever, but it's happened a couple times in life and death situations. zoning out, even if it's just for a few seconds, is a really bad idea when someone's firing a gun at you y'know?
i don't know what you'd call many. we're called metahumans, where i'm from. a couple years ago a particle accelerator exploded and released a wave of dark matter energy that changed some people in the city. but i don't really have any way of knowing how many of us there are, though. at least 1% of the population, for sure. maybe a lot more. people don't go around saying they're metas much.
[ Cisco cannot help himself: he sounds a second text full of questions, earnest and a little desperate. ]
so you hear other people's thoughts? for real? do you have to be near to them or is it anyone, anywhere? like you can't read my mind right now, right? how'd you get your powers? do you know how to close off your mind? do you think you could teach me to do it?
[ Oh, that was a lot, wasn't it? ]
uh, sorry for the wall of questions. i've met plenty of metas, but never really anyone with powers like ours before. stuff involving... i guess esp or whatever you wanna call it.