"Mm?"

"Can you reassure me that not everyone in this party is a misgendering ball of snot?"

"I have not snuck out to stargaze on the roof."

"You know what I meant." Pet pet the cute robot.

"I don't otherwise have a complete tally of who here is and isn't a misgendering mucus sphere. What happened?"

"Talked to this lovely couple of very very rich people who seemed intent on calling me 'young man,' no matter how many times I politely corrected them, while they helpfully explained something or other about how to do my job better."

"Was their advice as good as their manners?"

"Bit worse."

"Entertainingly, or...?"

"I suppose it could have been entertaining if the misgendering wasn't irking me and if they weren't acting so condescending about it. One would imagine that if only they had powers all problems of the world would be solved."

"Ah. That's a type. I grew out of it when I was like ten, I guess they skipped that milestone."

"A 'type'?"

"People who think the world would be fine if only they personally had powers, but, like, good powers, not ones that were inconvenient in any way or bad for their tactical style, and also their trigger event doesn't make them any less psychologically effective and they have a lot of charisma that works on incompatible factions all at the same time and money is no object. Those people."

"Ah." Pause. "You know, even when I'm in the 'I am invincible' character I don't think I've ever been that confident." Other pause. "Behemoth when I was seven might've had something to do with that, though," they whisper, and hug the robot again.

The robot buzzes in a purring sort of way.

"Also I think knowledge of the existence of trigger events isn't that common."

"Except among cape geeks, yeah, although I'd hope the sort of people who show up to this sort of thing would have a higher rate of knowing their shit."

"Eh, I dunno, strip away the capes and this is a fancy party with expensive food costing exorbitant amounts to come, I'm sure most people here are just coming to mingle and eat hors d'oeuvres and look important."

"There are similar parties for art museums and orphanage benefits and so on. Some people here probably just go to every such thing they can afford, but some of them are picking and choosing."

They shrug. "I guess," they say, and pet the robot again.

"Singular they is too plural, and thou'rt silly for using it that way?"

"Yes, pretty much. They said I should just pick a pronoun and stick to it."

"Did you tell them you tried that and it made you miserable?"