"I'm waffling on taking out a mortgage, leaning not until I've done a couple dungeons and know if I can keep up with it as a job."

"Mm. If I'm not going to be in student dorms or Mom's place, I haven't really thought about what else... And I can't say I'm really attached to the idea of college-per-college if esper stuff is going to be a big deal. Learning is great and all but... I don't know. I'm not dreaming about college culture."

She introspects on her itchiness levels.

"I think I'm pretty close to zero backlash? 'Nother minute or so at most."

"I think maybe - if you get to zero first I'll slow down so maybe ten, fifteen minutes for me."

"If I get to zero I'll push on the wall or something a little bit so we're clear faster."

...She's feeling a bit morose now, thinking about the future.

She adjusts pose until she can use her phone in one hand.

Yeah, that's a good idea, he's close enough to zero that he can at least text without having to start over six times even if he can't quite yet read a book. He tells Cricket and Ren and Charlie all the good news.

She texts her chosen agent all the recent happenings and discoveries and that she'd like to go with them at least for now, how does all the paperwork and so on go? And also her mom.

-She snorts in incredulous laughter and shakes her head soon after, at her mom's response.

"Share with the class?"

"I can tell religosity is fighting with protectiveness in my mom's head- About you being gay, I mean. I think protectiveness won."

"Wow, okay. Is this the sort of problem I solve by, like, acting normal around her, or by never meeting her, or what."

"First thing. She's... Well, I'm biased, but I really do think it was just a cached gut response? I'm arguing at her and she's apologizing." Typety type.

"Sure."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"It's not a huge deal, just, like, it's the twenty-first century, usually I don't run into it."

"...It's... I can talk about it if you're backlashy enough to want to but... I'm going to push a very little bit on the wall, I'm out and I want to clear you a bit faster. I think feeling out backlash levels will come with practice."

"I'm low enough, don't worry about chatting at this level, like, I'll still talk a lot but it's not acutely devastating if nobody answers."

"Sure..." Back to texting.

They make sure they've exchanged numbers and promises to text and coordinate. And then they leave as the event wraps up.

Not that it feels very real. Still, it's a relief to not worry about being itchy forever if she slips up slightly. 

A few days later, Wendy shows up to an in person meeting with her selected agent. She has texted about not being sure what intermediate steps happen between now and going into a dungeon, or maybe preferably doing construction or something with her kinetic power.

Her chosen agent has an office in the Toronto office building floor that MEA rents. The place has potted plants and art on the walls and a nice fish tank, but Kathleen Havisham's office in particular has only one plant and one art and no fish. "Welcome!" she says, beckoning Wendy in. "I hope you didn't have to travel too far to get here?"

At least this office is less overfancy than the rest of it. 

"Uh, hi. Not too bad, just, city traffic and a new place."

"Well, go ahead and have a seat. Tell me about your powers, what do you see yourself doing with them?"

"I've been texting you some about them? Hmm... So, everything I've figured out so far works on the metaphor of pushing things. Though... Haven't really done a lot of testing yet. I can push on people and objects, and it's as if I'm applying force to them. Like putting a giant's fist on a crash dummy's chest. The push can push back on me, or not- Equal and opposite reaction, like? I can choose whether I get the opposite reaction, and be shoved away, or just stand there. And I can only push, not pull. Though I can aim it, sort of, as long as there's a line from my body to what I'm pushing. Like, if I hold something between my hands I can push off either hand to move it left or right. In terms of force, I shoved a crash test dummy around and it felt like I wasn't anywhere near my cap. Kinetics, pushing things, felt pretty efficient overall. I don't know if I can do a railgun thing- Small object, very high speed. Didn't seem like a great idea to test that.

Separately, I can also push defense up- It does a lot more backlash than applying force did. I didn't even feel light objects like napkins or tennis balls thrown at me while I was doing that. And I also suppressed a psychic power for a little bit by pushing out the idea of 'psychic defense', but that was very heavy backlash, I don't want to make a habit of it... I have a gut feeling the defense thing might be amenable to practice, efficiency-wise? As for what I'd do... I wonder if my power can be used for reactionless acceleration. For spacecraft. If I can take something from suborbital to orbit, beat the rocket equation, that would be so cool! Uh, if it can be done safely. Other than that... I'm not eager to attack dungeons but they do need attacking and it's sort of the done thing. I had the thought that I might also be able to do construction or something?"

"Hmm, espers in construction are totally a thing but you need high precision for it, so if that's the direction you want to go you'd want to practice in situations where you can measure and verify your application of force. Launching satellites is a very exciting concept but also has very tight tolerances; I can start calling around to rocket science types and find out more about that. Your partner is also pretty new, right?"

"Yeah, I'm not really sure how the launching would work yet, just, exciting... Hmm. Precision practice sounds pretty interesting. I can play around with laboratory balances or careful aim... Juggle things, maybe? What are some examples of what construction espers do? Closer the practice the better, probably? He's also new, or well, I'm not sure if anything's official partner-wise? I met him at the first meetup I went to. We get along okay. Probably want to keep going to more events. For options and all."

"That's totally legit, a lot of espers kind of burn out on meetups right away and stop as soon as they find someone but from my perspective it's pure upside for you to go to as many as you could possibly want, so you have the best possible partner and plenty of possible secondaries. Construction espers often substitute for large equipment, especially in tight spaces or remote locations. You sound like since you push rather than pulling, you're probably not an excavator, and probably not anything that has to hold something or someone in place for an extended time like a crane - even if you have the precision for that safety regulations tend to assume that an esper could backlash out at any moment - but you could be a bulldozer, or do paving-type work where you pulverize old surface to make way for a new one you flatten. You could try that out on clay, try to aim for flat and level and then for specific angles. The balances idea is also great. I can order both for you."

"Sounds good on the clay and balances... I could probably pound things into walls or the ground, like nails, or fence posts, or those long snake drills for digging wells, what're they called... Augers? Sinking metal bars into liquid concrete? I wonder if I can twist bolts, run wires, that kind of thing. When you say 'remote areas' do you mean like, random cell phone towers in a field in Nunavut? National park trails too steep to get a bulldozer to?"

"Hammers and people to operate them are cheap. If you can do it very efficiently it might make sense to have you on railroad spikes or something, but if you want to command higher than union workman wages, better not to specialize in anything they can do with one of those alone. Park trails and cell towers are both good use cases, or research stations, or maybe underwater if you can work in scuba gear."