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Referring to my previous post on Emotional Echolocation Dream (this post), I wanted to share more thoughts on NM's side of his Empathic abiltiies! Just like his twin, Passive NM could feel feelings from an object with some time and focus. Before the gifts to NM trickled into the void, most gifts to NM were trembling with the echoes of a cornered dog, growling with its tail between its legs (most of the time he waited until Dream had wandered to take the gifts from their hiding place. NM refused to let Dream tap into these gifts full of what ifs and a looming bear. Then after collecting them using the gifts as much as possible while thinking of old memories of just Dream and himself atop their hill).
Passive NM could feel a lightness, a joy, in the gifts too, but he often paused with wider eyes. The villager must've been having happy memories of wrapping another childs present. Simple mistakes happen all the time, so Nightmare leaves out these little positive ones to let Dream feel them too. His twins smile mixed with a few claps and dancing toes makes NM grin through the trees of guilt.
After consuming the apples, feeling the emotions inside one specific object became... difficult to say the least. His abilties spanned over au's. Growing large and pulling itself to every corner. Focusing on something as little as a shirt was difficult and a waste of time.
Although, it wasn't something he particularly cared about. Feeling the Negativity directly from the source was much more filling. Nightmare doesn't need to feel the emotions inside an object. He can conclude those for himself afterall. He is quite the horrifying creature for someone to meet inside their safe space. After a century, that mindset changes purely out of bordem(and a little curiosity), he starts practicing on trying to feel specific objects.
Nightmare conculded that one, trying to sense the emotions of something smaller than a chair was simply fruitles. It is near impossible to focus all his powers all at once on such a miniscule and worthless object. Two, it is much simpler to take the average emotion of a building/larger area. For example, to feel everything inside a apartment complex, then put it all in a blender, mix it together, and take a drink that way. It becomes one big glorious rock, full of negativity thanks to the being itself sitting atop their roofs. If the Source of the initial negativity is a main meal, the rock of generalized feelings Nightmare absorbs are dessert(these taste different depending on the AU. Nightmare's favorite AU's at this point in the multiverse consist of Underfells and Horrortales. The length of their despair is so old its engraved into their very existence. The best places to recover after an battle).
Lastly, after another 45 years of experiments, Nightmare made a break through. If all the tentacles were holding different small objects, then his hands held holding another two, with immense focus and time, Nightmare could list the emotions from the individual objects. It would be ineffective in almost any future scenario due to the average length of the operations, he'd write down after, but it is good knowledge to know. He only does anything similar later on if an object holds critical information relating to an AU(emotions tell stories. A pathway full of stones could leave a touch of despair as their vicitm runs) or a member of his gang(Cross is one he used this abilty on once he was back at the castle. There wasn't much to feel in the empty AU, and that made focusing on feeling the papers and pens emotions even easier Nightmare later notes. X-Tale will continue to be useful).