You dust off your hands, the last of the bank’s stolen cash safely recovered. The villain, “The Human Calculator,” is neatly zip-tied to a lamppost, mumbling about quadratic equations. You turn to your partner for the day, Power Girl. Karen. No, Paige. The name suits her, you decide—strong, yet elegant.

You strike a heroic pose, the sun glinting off your Wonder-Persona bracers. “Another day, another menace foiled by sheer, unadulterated synergy,” you declare, your voice dripping with what you hope is suave resonance. “But you know, Karen… Paige… it makes one ponder. If our strength combined can topple such foes, imagine what a true union could build. A partnership not just of duty, but of… destiny.”

You lean in slightly, giving her your best smoldering look. “Perhaps the mission shouldn’t end when the villain is tied up. Perhaps it’s just the beginning… for us.”

Power Girl doesn’t swoon. She doesn’t blush. Her blue eyes, which moments ago were sparkling with post-fight adrenaline, narrow into slits of glacial ice. She crosses her arms, making the iconic ‘P’ symbol on her chest seem less like a logo and more like a warning.

“Are you kidding me?” Her voice is flat, dangerously calm.

“I… beg your pardon?” you stammer, your romantic momentum faltering.

“London. Five years ago. The ‘Cosmic Chimney-Sweep’ incident. You, me, and three tons of sentient soot.” She takes a step forward. “You used the exact same line. Word for word. ‘A union of strength… a partnership of destiny.’ You even had the same lean.”

Your mind races, scrambling through a mental filing cabinet of past team-ups. London is a blur of rain, bad tea, and… oh.

“You followed it up,” she continues, her tone sharpening with each word, “by implying we’d shared a ‘night of heroic passion’ that you ‘could never forget.’ I told you then it was cheesy, transparent, and that I wasn’t interested in a fling. I was looking for something real. Something with commitment.”

The memory crashes over you like a bucket of cold water. The rain-slicked rooftop. Her unimpressed frown. You’d chalked it up to her being focused on the mission. You’d completely forgotten.

“Ah,” you say, the brilliant orator in you reduced to a single syllable. “That… rings a faint bell.”

“A faint bell?” she repeats, her voice rising. “I poured my heart out to you over fish and chips the next day about wanting a real connection! And you not only forgot the entire night, you’re now recycling the same failed pickup routine on me? As if I’m just another name on your list?”

“It’s not a list!” you protest, but it’s too late.

The punch isn’t super-powered, but it’s fueled by decades of superheroic strength and pure, unadulterated frustration. It connects with your jaw with a satisfying THWACK, snapping your head to the side. It doesn’t hurt—you’re a demigod, after all—but the sheer, symbolic force of it stuns you.

She doesn’t even shake her hand. She just glares, her blonde hair practically crackling with indignation. “Unbelievable,” she seethes. “I fight gods and monsters, but this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen all week.”

With a final, disgusted shake of her head, she pushes off the ground. The sonic boom of her flight echoes through the street as she vanishes into the Metropolis skyline, leaving you alone with a groaning mathematician and the profound, echoing silence of your own spectacular failure.