Labelling others

Gregory had always been complimented by his friends on how accurately he could gauge a person just by looking at them. What they didn't realize, and probably couldn't realize, was that it was all tied into Gregory Jr.'s odd gift. Ever since puberty, he had the ability to literally read people. Just by looking at a person, he could instantly gain a general idea of who they were as a person. Over time, he discovered that by focusing on one person for a few moments, he could see how other people perceive them as words or short phrases floating around them. And by focusing a bit harder, he could see phrases detailing how the person sees themselves.

This alone would be a fantastic power to have, but Gregory had recently discovered another aspect of his ability. He could add his own floating 'labels' to people, or even edit existing ones, and depending on what level they were on, they would either cause people to immediately attribute the label to his target and treat them accordingly, or cause the target themselves to act or behave according to the label. He hadn't played around with it much up until now, partially out of concern for others and partially because actually using something so powerful was new to him, but he experimented on his coworkers and random passerby enough to know that it worked. While he was still learning the exact limits of his new ability, what he knew he could do now was more than enough to punish the gold-digger Jessica with. Plus, her abhorrent behavior gave Gregory more than enough justification to really see how far he could push this power on someone.

As Jessica got set up at her desk, Gregory took the opportunity to look at her current 'labels'. Starting externally, he saw pretty much what he expected: 'attractive', 'reliable', 'clever', 'single and looking'... all things that Jessica was most likely intentionally cultivating with her manufactured image. Amusingly, he couldn't help but notice that 'gold digger' was floating among the swarm of words around her, though compared to the others it was small and faint, likely due to the low number of people currently seeing her in that way. Getting a good idea of what to expect, Gregory focused harder to take a look at how Jessica saw herself. Not surprisingly, several of the same phrases were present, though 'clever' was replaced with 'genius', and there were other words such as 'powerful', 'manipulative', 'free', and hilariously enough 'self-made'. 'Gold digger' was a little more prominent here, but Jessica clearly preferred to refer to herself in other terms.

Pulling back out to his regular view, Gregory thought about what he could do to Jessica, to both make her pay for the people she's already hurt and make sure his father wouldn't become her next target. He already figured that unless he could think of something really good, he should only make a change on one level to start with. The question was, would it be more effective to give her an external label and change how others see Jessica, or an internal label to change how she sees herself? And more importantly, what 'label' exactly did he want to apply to Jessica?