(They rush in when they hear the scream, and find their daughter looking at her broken arm in utter confusion.)

Dad reminds her that she promised to try not to move her right arm in exchange for a quad batch of pesto. She groans and says she thought that was just for the night, how long does she have to keep it still?

Her fathers look at each other. "So, the doctor emailed us and said that you might be [??¿¿]!" Papa says excitedly.

? is [??¿¿] a good thing now?  She squints in annoyance. 

-oh, she can't understand that, either. He looks at Dave helplessly.

He crouches down until he's at eye level with her and takes her left hand in his gently. 

"Kanikins, things are going to be... weird and hard and scary. We think it'll just last a week, but we're not sure. Did you get all that?" 

She thinks back to her horrible evening and shudders, then winces at the surprise jolt of pain this causes. 

"... Yeah. Weird and terrible and painful week. ...probably-a-week." 

She sighs. She feels so tired. 

"...please don't make me go back to the hospital," she grumbles. 

He sighs in relief, trying to make a mental note. Her... backlash (?) seems like stops her from learning about... things that are happening to her, which is really weird, but she got this okay. 

He squeezes her good hand. "We shouldn't need to. You were very brave, last night, and we think all you need to do now is rest in bed and wait it out, okay?" 

... they're going to get more worried if she doesn't acknowledge him. She should nod. (She nods).

But...

She's annoyed. Annoyed enough to deviate from the path of least resistance, apparently. 

"So, what, I have to sit around and be confused and in pain for at least a week, but maybe longer, and you can't even explain why?" (her voice is rising - not shouting, certainly, but a stark difference from how quiet she usually is. She doesn't notice.) "And you want me to not use my right arm the whole time? For some stupid food? That's not what I thought I was agreeing to!" 

"Kani..." but then she glares at him, and that shuts him right up. Their poor little girl... 

After several seconds of awkward silence, he clears his throat. "That's fair. I guess we're asking a lot of you" from her perspective, anyways "and it's only fair you get something big in return. Think about something you want and - we can't promise to get you anything, you know that, but - if we can afford it, it's on the table, ok?" 

She swallows and then nods, hesitantly.

...it's hard for her to think of something she wants more than to know what's going on. As far as she knows, she... took a hike, and then... weird and terrible things started happening?

With some effort, she manages to express this to her fathers. They give each other a Look. (She does not like that look.)

Dad squeezes her hand again. "Kanikins, we can try and explain, but it's hard because it seems like [??¿¿] -" he cuts himself off when he sees her glare.

Papa has a thoughtful look on his face. "...Kani, when Dad said [??¿¿], what did you hear?"

She twists her face up in thought, trying to remember. 

"...It's gibberish. I couldn't make that sound with my mouth. How are you doing that?"

It's hard for her to read the look on Dad's face. "We're just - talking normally, honey, as far as we can tell."

This is really frustrating! Why are they lying to her about this!?

-oh dear, she's getting upset.

He holds up his hands in surrender. "I'm sorry, honey. We can stop talking about it. We love you, okay? You can think about what you want in exchange for not using your right arm this week, and I'll go get breakfast started. I'll make waffles just how you like them, and cut them up so you don't have to, okay?"

Time passes.

For Kani, it's confusing and boring and humiliating and occasionally very painful.

She doesn't have to go to school this week, which is a small mercy. She sleeps a lot and watches a lot of TV. Dad and Papa trade off shifts so that one of them is always home with her, and they do a good job of keeping her fed with food she likes, including lots of waffles for breakfast, her favorite takeout pizza options, and the promised quad batch of pesto.

She tells her fathers that in exchange for pretending to be an amputee she wants a fiberglass canoe to replace poor old Bippy (may she rest in pieces), and is shocked when after they mutter to each other quietly they agree. (When the shock wears off, she feels guilty - fiberglass canoes are expensive!)

Pretending to be an amputee is hard and makes her life so much more stressful, and sometimes she forgets (or just 'forgets'), but she does a pretty good job, all things considered. 

Sometimes she's hit with horrible spikes of pain and she can never understand why. Because of the [??¿¿], she thinks bitterly, whatever the fuck that means.

They ask her more questions about [??¿¿], and play some horrible game where they talk about Papa breaking his arm, tripping and falling, and even awakening as an esper(??) and then follow up by talking about [??¿¿]. She is so fucking sick of  [??¿¿], and after a few minutes of this she gets angry enough to cry about it. They don't try again.

Later, Dad tries to convince her that she's going to be an esper. She tells him this is stupid, because espers are very very rare, and also they have to go through hell week first! If she was having a hell week she's pretty sure she would notice!! He pats her on the head and starts to talk, but then stops. (He's been doing that a lot, the last few days. Maybe he's started to notice when he's going to speak gibberish? She hopes so.)

Dave has to stop Pete from doing more experiments with written sentences. Kani reports that she just saw scribbles on her hospital outtake form, and her increasing impatience and anger with concepts she's unable to understand is... entirely reasonable, honestly, Dave thinks he'd probably feel the same. 

They might learn something by doing the experiments, he concedes to Pete, maybe even something valuable, but it's nothing they can't learn later, after Kani's hell week is over and she can understand what happened to her and meaningfully consent.  Dave actually raises his voice, saying it, for the first time in as long as he can remember. (He feels horrible, seeing the look of shock on Pete's face, and apologizes immediately, but it still happened. He hates this.)

Pete agrees, and then admits he wanted to keep experimenting because it made him feel a bit less helpless. Maybe he'd figure out some way of getting through to her, he says, with a barking laugh. They're both pretty sure the only way out is through.

By the fourth day, they're sure there is a through - her eyes are changing color, the usual pale blue growing more vivid. Dave emails Dr Ixi with a side-by-side, along with profuse thanks for telling them where to look. Pete makes Kani an extra-nice dinner - the bread she likes, pesto in noodles, and a serving of the chili they made together yesterday (Kani didn't end up doing much besides stir and recite the recipe from memory, but she'd seemed happy to do that part - she complained about the boredom a lot, and this was something to do. And they all get chili out of it!)

She looks almost happy, eating it. When she asks what the occasion is, Dave surprises Pete by having a believable answer ready ("it's national aviation day!"), which Kani rolls her eyes about but doesn't press further on.

Oh! That's very exciting news. They revel in smugness (they correctly diagnosed an esper awakening) for longer than they'd like to admit before doing a few searches and composing a reply. 

Congratulations! I've attached some resources for important basics for newly-awakened espers, and a list of upcoming mixers in the area, if she wants to start looking for compatible guides right away.

The resources includes tips like "do NOT use your power without a source of guiding if you can help it", the difference between acute and chronic backlash and the dangers of both, information about esper agents, "if relevant to your biology, get access to a birth control implant before entering a guiding partnership Just In Case, as guiding can be extremely and unexpectedly physiologically intense", and more!

They stare at each other in horror, reading that last bit.

"Do you think -"

    "I would rather not think, actually! We can show it all to her once she finishes, and she can make her own decisions."

"Are you sure -"

     "She's always been conscientious with her health! I see no reason to expect that to change."

"...that's fair. But... I still might talk to her about it. While you're elsewhere."

     "Thanks."