To say he was feeling personal discomfort was something of an understatement.
He had grown up so used to feeling like an outcast or a freak or a monster, with the exception of the times he'd been in those bad parts of town.  Funny how the worst people had treated him fairer than anyone else he had ever known.  Hard to not be a little jaded by something as ridiculously stupid as that.
As each person came up to introduce themselves it was all Cliff could do to concentrate, his thoughts were like debris being swept up by a cyclone, a chaotic heap of mental detritus that made him dizzy at the best of times and hopelessly unsteady at the worst.

Each of the Meta humans assembled in the briefing room seemed so vastly and fundamentally different in both powers and personalities and Cliff was no different, he supposed.
[i]Shit, I finally found more like me and I don't relate to a single one of them.[/i]
A begrudging sense of surface level pride forbade him from admitting how scared he was now (and, well, all the time) but the soul inside which was still very much that of an abandoned child was screaming silently and causing him to reflexively clench and unclench his hands into fists.

Suddenly it was time for him to get up, at least he supposed when the floor went quiet and a gap appeared.
He took a discreet breath to steady himself and stood up.  He attempted taking a step to the front of the room, but found his legs wouldn't allow such a thing.
He cleared his throat, and placed a hand over the inside of his elbow reflexively.  The place where so many needles had gone and so much junk entered his body.  Infections from misuse had left scars there permanently and rather than serving as painful reminders they were just dead giveaways.  Like hell anyone would even care about this junkie anyway, but he was here and stubborn enough to refuse not to be acknowledged.
"I'm Cliff...uh, codename Evil Eyes," he said as though each word were chosen very carefully, "I don't really know how to explain myself...but I guess I can...um, control kinetic energy, I think.  At least that's what my file...what my dossier says.  I..." he suddenly went blank, like he had reached his limit of what to say in one sentence so he concluded with a pathetic and timid, "thank you," and sat back down.

[i]There, see?  Not unlike pulling teeth sure, but you did it.[/i]