THE MOMENT
"Some might call it glamourous, but it takes a mental toll you wouldn't believe," Stacy finished describing her job, as glamourously as possible, then nodded at Kurt on the other side of the cafe table. "What about you, what do you do?"
They'd been there almost 15 minutes already, enough time to receive their orders, and for Stacy to explain all the perks she earned as part of her job. She was a personal assistant to one of the hottest movie stars in Hollywood's personal assistant. Stacy felt it was important to open with that, because she could be called away on business at any time. She'd gone on about how she was doing the actual legwork that the assistant passed on to her, and that she'd met the famous movie star. She even showed Kurt a selfie of them together as proof.
"Nothing quite as busy as you," Kurt grinned as he shook his head. He'd already made up his mind that they weren't compatible. He wasn't able to put his finger on exactly why; but, he did get the feeling that status was far more important to her than it was to him personally. That attitude tended to cause problems in his line of work. "I'm a hero," he said. "I'm not top-tier or anything, but maybe you've heard of me. I'm Lightwave."
"You're a hero?" Stacy stared at him with stern eyes, but they weren't cold. She wasn't fighting against disbelief exactly, but she watched him carefully for any hints of a lie. Although, to her, it was its own red flag that he volunteered that information so early. "Why are you telling me on the first date? Isn't the whole point of a secret identity for it to be, you know, secret?" she asked.
Kurt did the only thing he could do; he laughed with a solid nod.
"You're not wrong," he chuckled. "That is in fact the whole point of a secret identity."
"So, why are you telling me?" Stacy shook her head. She couldn't conceive of any positive reason he would admit his secret identity. She was too busy, and too caught up in her own job, to pay much attention to the Super community. They existed, and sometimes complicated her days, but beyond that she barely gave them a second thought. Either he was trying overly hard to impress her, or he was trying to set up a scam of some sort. She almost would've preferred to hear 'I love you' on the first date, at least she knew how to deal with that. But, this confession was more intimate than she was ready for. Would her life be in danger now too?
"You asked what I did, told you," Kurt replied with neutral grin. At this point, he was having fun and it was mildly at her expense. She was missing an obvious detail.
"Are you new?" She asked with a giggle. "Or, did you just think I'm that pretty? You're not supposed to be revealing your secret identity to the first stranger you match with."
"I didn't reveal a secret identity," Kurt shook his head. "I told you I was a hero, there are no secrets involved; everyone knows I'm Lightwave. I'm a professional Hero, publicly registered, like most heroes," he said.
"Professional?" Stacy wasn't completely out of the loop. She picked up a few background tidbits just by being part of the world. And, the most prominent tidbit at the moment became the pay scale for Superheroes. "What tier are we talking? S? S+?" she asked. Her reaction to his identity reveal was suddenly embarrassing, and she also took the chance for a new topic. Although, Kurt decided the date was over. And, he found an easy way out. Stacy didn't seem to know much about the scene. He'd played it down initially by claiming he wasn't in the top-tier, specifcally for this reason. If she found out he was arguably the most powerful man on the planet, she might've continued to pester him. He doubted she'd check up on anything about him, especially if she thought he was a loser.
"My power's pretty useless," he shook his head without answering directly. He pointed at one of the coffee shop windows letting the sunlight through, then made a slow motion with his finger leading from the window into the empty cup he finished. Stacy watched as golden sunlight poured into the cup directly out of the air. "I can turn 'light' into a 'liquid-like' state, he said. With a flourish he raised the cup to toast her, then drank it all. On its own, sunlight didn't taste like anything, but he got a few notes of coffee flavor from the finished drink. Almost anyone else might've been able to see the possibilities of fluid energy. But, he'd already set a baseline for her, and Stacy was very much a prisoner of her expectations.
"That's it?" she scoffed. "No wonder I never heard of you. Woo, liquid light, big deal," she shook her head as she stood. "I think this isn't working out. I'm going to leave, and I hope you have a nice evening," she said as she walked away.