She shows up at an esper mixer three weeks after awakening. She's wearing baggy clothes, and her hair is colourmatch dyed to match her roots, imperfectly. She's pretty self conscious about both of those things. She also thought about lying about her age but didn't think she could carry it off. She's also still really anxious about whether she'll be able to handle her backlash well enough to get guiding, assuming she even finds someone here. She also does not plan to do powers testing at this mixer, because no. Even though they don't crowd these venues very tightly there's still quite a few people here.

She does find someone. She's not sure how good the compatibility is actually but it's good enough that holding her hand feels really nice. With that security she does end up carefully poking at her power and learns that she could teleport to a person she can perceive clearly enough, or bring them to her. Or as she notices while thinking about her mom while poking at it, someone she knows very well. But that feels a bit 'stretchy' so she's definitely not going to try that first. It's probably not that useful anyway. She also and more interestingly has a sensory power, and she's pretty sure she can also use the teleportation within range of it.

The next day they go to a large park in the suburbs. It's still early enough in the year that the parks aren't very populated and there's plenty of space between the center and the surrounding houses. Her temporary partner knows somebody who is a nurse and knows how to correctly apply medical leg restraints, just in case she panics, and can also act as a test subject for range testing among other things. They don't want to involve somebody that Annette knows because her power seems to care about that, at least for those she knows very well so it would be a confounding factor.

She ends up with two sets of leg restraints since they aren't really rated for restraining espers but the heavy duty restraints aren't exactly easy to get a hold of on your own on short notice. They're in a fairly secluded area of the park for backlash management reasons and also social consequence reasons. It's cold enough that everyone is going to stay fully clothed of course, but still. (Hands may end up under shirts if necessary)

(They did not give the helper the details of Annette's backlash, just that she might need to be restrained)

She breathes deeply, closes her eyes and - reaches, slowly and carefully, with a mental hand.

She's already aware of where her partner is because they're touching of course but now that awareness is deeper. As she focuses on the sensation she can pick out heartbeat and breath (she could count both out if as clearly as if she were taking the young woman's vitals n the traditional manner) and slight hunger. 

(She's also aware of increased pleasure form the physical contact. She's not sure if it's eating all the backlash or not but she's not in discomfort at the moment.

She reports the results, and then informs them that she's going to stretch her range just a little more to encompass the helper standing a couple of meters away to get more information about how her location sense works. 

She reaches further to touch the helper. It really does feel like 'touching' like you can tell where an object your hand is touching is by the position of your limb, even when reaching behind your back. She's also still aware of her partner holding her hand. She can only get detailed data on one person at a time but she can switch back and forth between them really fast.

It occurs to her at this point that she should maybe check if switching 'focus' is additional backlash before she forgets. This involves letting go of the guiding hand which she's really nervous about but she can't count on getting constant guiding or always being backlash negative even if she did have guiding while using her power. If she's backlash negative with...low efficiency guiding then hopefully she won't rack up more of it then she can handle. She reminds herself that awakening backlash is a Lot and it won't be anything like that just letting go for a minute at a time. She doesn't feel like she's stretching her range much.

She tells both people her plan. Neither of them thinks it's obviously a stupid idea. She stops 'focusing' on either person though she keeps her power active giving her the basic location sense. She then lets go, waits a minute without focusing on either person (timed with a stopwatch), stops using her power entirely and then takes her partner's hand again. She's aware of slight discomfort with with the feeling of skin contact but it's easily outweighed by the guiding. They time how long it takes her to feel like she's at zero again. Then they do this twice more, once with her focusing on one person the whole time and once with her switching focus every ten seconds. The second two tests are noticeably but not dramatically worse than the first but if there's any difference between them it's negligible. 

They run more tests. It occurs to them while testing the range that she should try to only direct the sense in the direction their helper is walking, which works and saves on backlash compared to the broad sweep. Probably she wouldn't be able to get it as narrow when trying to actually find people as when following a single person walking in a known direction but she might still be able to save on backlash. The range turns out to be roughly a kilometre as measured by map app, which according to the Internet at least is considered a decent range. 

At this point they realize they have a possible ethics issue since they want to test how much backlash she gets from doing a wider sweep at maximum range, but that has the possibility to catch random park goers in the sweep. Obviously dungeon victims aren't consenting in advance either but presumably there are allowances there for it being necessary to save them from being eaten by a dungeon. She doesn't know what the rules are for random people. Her power isn't super invasive, at least if she's not focusing on people (it might count as a violation of medical privacy or something if she was focusing on people) but there might still be rules about it. Her partner isn't a dungeon esper (she's looking for a very compatible person so she can do civilian contract work (her backlash rate is kinda bad) and doesn't know the details.

She does suggest that Annette should maybe look into temporarily hiring an agent who can get her into a cleared dungeon for powers testing purposes, because then she can just ask the DRT guys for consent or get them to get out of her way for a minute. (Technically she could go into one with victims but she doesn't really want to 'work' until she has a better idea about how much she can do without having a meltdown. Being not even 17 is probably going to ding her respectability with the DRT the last thing she needs is to show up and immediately have a meltdown instead of helping. 

The idea of going into a dungeon, even a cleared one is kinda scary and she's not sure her parents will be happy about it but she was already thinking about it so.

There's one last obvious test they can try right now and that is teleporitng the helper back instead of making her walk back.

She's going to stop using her power for a minute and maneuver onto her partner's lap, given the weather this doesn't immediately increase skin contact much but it does open up new options, as well as provide the possibility for more restraint if this turns out to be really bad. She waits to be at zero again (it doesn't take too terribly long, a thin slice at max range was building backlash but not very fast) and then reaches out with her thin slice (she still remembers where it was pointing so it's not hard to find the helper).  It occurs to her that ideally the helper won't end up touching her, considering that even at low levels her backlash doesn't like that, and the helper is not a compatible esper to even partially counterbalance that so she tries to focus on a space a couple of feet away from her as she 'grabs' and 'pulls' on the sense of the helper's location. 

It works. The helper appears in the space she thought about. She stumbles slightly as she appears since the ground is slightly differently uneven than where she was. The two of them appear for a split second to be linked with a thin cable of blueish light.  She immediately drops her power.

The backlash is more than she's had so far and she flinches slightly, but is able to force herself to remain still and remember that she needs to keep touching this person. She's not sure she'd be able to force herself to keep touching somebody who wasn't a compatible esper at this level though. Probably this is not the time to test that.  In case she reflexively punches the woman or something. 

Since they seem to be done for right now, the helper opens the door to the car parked nearby and she is placed on the back seat and scoots across it to sit by the opposite window without breaking skin contact with her partner after which her partner slides in after her and the helper slides in next to them on the other side of the car. This way she has only one person physically pressed up against her. It's still uncomfortable. Once they're in the car and isolated from cold and judgemental people, sleeves can be rolled up as far as possible. One of Annete's sleeves is rolled up slowly, to gradually increase the skin contact the other fast. The latter turns out to be worse and she flinches again. 

And then drive off back to the city.