"I bet I'll be cool enough to make lots of money. I can buy you a car with both our names on it That would be cool, right?"

"How about you think about spending money when you have the money. Also when you're thinking straight."

The next few days are increasingly strained as everyone gets more and more tired of this. Meghan becomes increasingly cranky and prone to yelling at people and in one case pinching one of her cousins hard enough to leave a bruise because he looked away while she was talking to him.

As the following Friday wears on and the symptoms don't show signs of easing she gets more and more frustrated and alternates between crying and yelling.

Her mom is doing her best to apply comfort, but her best isn't very good at this point. She's pretty tired too.

It's shortly before dinnertime when she finally draws a sharp breath in.

"Oh...it's, it's easing off." she shivers a bit.

Hugs.

"You made it. Everything's going to be all right."

"Everything's gonna be great!"

The sheer relief of feeling the pressure finally begin to release is enough to give her a bit of a second wind. She manages more coherent conversation then she was managing for most of the day.

(and gradually, gradually the frantic desperation begins to fade)

By dinner she's drooping again, as she is finally afforded the space to notice her exhaustion. As the backlash eases down this actually results in her conversational efforts slowing down instead of just becoming less coherent.

It's obvious when it ends entirely, she lets out a deep sigh, stops trying to have a conversation, and methodically finishes the rest of her food

It really is like coming awake, after a week trapped in a nightmare, reality comes back into focus.

But she's too tired to deal with that right now. She goes to bed, for the first time in a week without a pill or anyone else in the room.

Roughly fourteen hours later she wakes up.

And is almost immediately overwhelmed by a wave of mortification as her behaviour over the last week comes back into her awareness, and she's able to consider it with a clear head.

She cries quietly for a while.

And then remembers that even espers have to deal with basic things. Like going to the bathroom.She does that, and then takes a long shower.And then gets distracted looking at her reflection in the full length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. She was reasonable looking before in her opinion, but now she's way more then that. Also she actually has muscle tone in her upper body (she had some in her legs already but her arms were pretty noodly). 

At some point she hears her dad going downstairs (it's Saturday, he slept in so she's awake in time for breakfast). She can actually hear his footsteps going all the way down the hall towards the kitchen (oh right, esper hearing is a thing. That's going to take getting used to). She kinda doesn't want to face anyone, but she can't really avoid her parents so, she gets dressed and goes downstairs.

He's making pancakes.

"Megs! Are you feeling better? D'you want some chocolate chips in yours?"

"...Yeah, I'm better. I was very tired is all. It was so hard to sleep...I'd love chocolate chips."

She hesitates, "...I'm so so so sorry for...all the yelling. And the stuff I said, and...I I'm gonna repay everyone. Somehow."

He flips the first couple of plain pancakes onto a plate and adds chocolate chips to batter for the next couple. Then he comes over and hugs her.

"You were being messed with in the head by magic. It's not your fault. And your mother and I weren't being particularly patient by the end either."

"I still owe a lot of people apologies. I hurt people. Not seriously but. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone seriously but I could have by accident cause I wasn't exactly thinking things through. I don't blame you for yelling. It didn't bother me at all at the time. Some of the time I was trying to rile people up. Because I didn't care if I was getting positive or negative attention. I just wanted to try to get as much attention as I could. But it was never enough so I just kept pushing and pushing."

she hesitates again, "I can feel something. The esper power. I'm scared to poke at it but I think there's a stealth thing. And something else I'm even less sure about. It's maybe useful for dungeons but...I don't know if it would be right to..inflict myself on random strangers. Like that."

He's gone back to finish making her pancakes

"Well, the awakening is, it's a lot of backlash, right? You don't have to let it get so bad, probably?. And every esper who is doing dungeons has backlash to deal with. You can ask people for advice. If you really want to do dungeons. Only if you want to though. Nobody can make you do that if you don't want to. You know that right? You could become a pilot or something.Your mother might be more comfortable with that."

"I want to to dungeons. If my power is good for it. And if I can figure out how not to be horrible to people while backlashed. Because if you have a power that's good for dungeons then, you should use it. People's lives depend on it."

She brings her father's plate over to the table with the butter and maple syrup (real maple syrup because this is Canada and we have standards). 

He brings her pancake loaded plate over to the table

"Well, if that's what you want to to do you should do it. Your mother will worry but she will cope. She knows you're an adult. As long as you finish high school first. We're sorting things out with the school. You won't be in trouble for what happened. There's policies. Because this sort of thing happens sometimes."

"I don't want to go back to school.I made a huge scene in front of everyone. Even if they don't punish me for it nobody's going to let me forget about it. Can I do remote learning for the rest of the year, please? I'll be behind anyway."

"We'll see what we can work out."

He hugs his daughter once more and they can eat breakfast in companionable mostly-quiet.

They arrange for her to do remote classes. She also arranges to attend a local esper mixer and find somebody a little bit compatible to do some basic power testing with. She figures out that she can not only hide herself but she can cover other people which has obvious uses in dealing with dungeon victims. She signs up with an agent and asks the agent to find her a more compatible professional partner to do further power testing and possibly to guide her after dungeons.

The person they eventually find for her is Jordan Monroe, nonbinary, about ten years older than her with a body dysmorphia backlash and a mostly-useless personal illusion power (it could theoretically be useful for acting but the backlash renders that unpleasant and is also dangerously feedback loopy as they will be inclined to try to use their power to ' pointlessly fix' their appearance). They can handle it in small amounts for guiding efficiency purposes however. They've been doing professional partnering long enough to have some experience with different esper powers and they provide some useful suggestions on the powers testing front. 

She therefore learns about the limits of her power, and about the secondary 'air running levitation' power. Which is expensive enough to be somewhat of an emergency measure especially given that it's somewhat feedback loopy given the amount of attention it could get. It's a pretty good emergency measure for the right kind of emergency though.