Her parents are really worried about the sudden distress. But it seems like trying to keep talking to her is just going to cause more distress.

Maybe sending a text will help?

She's on her bed with her knees drawn up against her chest staring at the door when her phone buzzes from the bedside table. She grabs it on autopilot

If you don't want to talk is this easier? Ma belle what is wrong? Why are you so afraid?

She stares at the text notification, hands shaking. It's not as bad as the sound of voices, enough that she can process the text successfully, but it's reminding her that her parents are downstairs and could come back upstairs anytime. She can't imagine returning the text. But if she doesn't acknowledge the text they might try to talk to her again, or worse come into the room.

Can she...text someone who is further away? Too far away to come in here? (at least immediately) Maybe...cousin Pierre is studying in France. There's a whole ocean between them. It'd take him days to get here. That's still scary but maybe. He shouldn't be busy right now, he doesn't have afternoon classes on Monday.

(what does she even say? She doesn't know how to answer those questions)

I need you to text my mom, as soon as possible. Tell her I can't talk to them. I can't have them or anyone near me. I can't stand it. I don't know why but it makes me so afraid I feel sick. Tell her, not to text me again. It's not as bad as being outside my door speaking but it's still bad. If they say anything to you about me you can tell me what they said.

They receive the text from Pierre. It is really worrying and confusing and obviously they need to do something about it. The obvious thing is to take her to the hospital and hope they can do something but if she can't even handle texts then that would be like torture. Maybe they can figure something out, for a little while. Just in Case.

(nobody is saying in case of what but nobody needs to)

Mr. Lapointe goes out to get some things (they aren't expensive so it won't matter too much if it doesn't work out and Ms. Lapointe sends another text through Pierre. 

She jumps as the phone buzzes again and peers supsiciously at it. It's Pierre. She can deal with this.

Your parents want to give you some things. If they leave them at the top of the stairs can you go get them. They won't come back up the stairs and it will only take a few minutes.

They could come back up anytime they wanted. It's not safe.

a few minutes pass

What if they drove down the block and did a video chat, without talking. We want them to be able to leave you alone for a while, but you have to get food and drink. If you can't then they can't leave you alone.

She doesn't want to see them on a video feed but..she really doesn't want them to come in here...

D'accord.

Five minutes later she gets another text and a video chat request from her mom. She pokes it and observes them standing still at the other end of the block near the house with the ugly paint job (no one else is visible in the frame). She stands up shakily and opens the door, keeping her eyes fixed on the phone screen. She goes down the hall and retrieves:

Two dozen litre water bottles
several boxes of various meal replacement and protein bars
a portable camping toilet (retrieved from the basement)

It ends up taking almost ten minutes due to the pile of stuff and the fact that she's doing it one handed while staring at the phone. And because she's shaking pretty badly by the end.

Once she's done she shoves a dresser against the door. There now she'll definitely hear if they try to get in even if she's asleep at the time.

The next week or so passes in a blur of tension. She tries to play games on her phone or read but she struggles to concentrate on them because she has to keep listening to make sure nobody is trying to get through the door or climb in the window. She spends a lot of time staring into space.

When she sleeps she sleeps badly and wakes in a panic every time until she can determine that nobody has snuck into the room while she was asleep.

She eats meal bars and drinks water though she unwraps the meal bars very carefully so they won't make too much noise and drown out the sound of somebody trying to get in.

The camping toilet needs to be emptied midway through the week requiring another Production. 

Cousin Pierre sends texts several time a day to check up on her. He tries to make a little bit of small talk but she responds only briefly.

At one point he tries to broach the subject of having somebody bring her her schoolwork so she can keep up but she desperately doesn't want to think about school (so many people) and cries for two hours until she's too tired to cry anymore and doesn't respond to that comment. 

She ends up with more furniture shoved against the door by the end of the week in hopes that it will let her stop panicking every time she wakes up.

Pierre isn't going to bring up the subject of esper awakenings with her because everyone decided not to get her hopes up, or upset her (and they are still mostly not bringing it up among themselves) and she's not going to think of it herself (that doesn't happen to boring people like her right? Her eyes are changing but she's not looking in a mirror and the reflection in her phone screen isn't clear enough to catch it unless the light hits it just right. (if she did notice she would not inform Pierre because then somebody would try to get in to see). 

If she's jumpier by the end of the week because her desperate straining to hear anyone coming in picks up more sounds then well she's not going to really notice. (Esper hearing is very convenient and ignorable but only if you are actually capable of ignoring it instead of being on high-alert)

And then she wakes up and doesn't instantly panic. She's still anxious but she's not panicked. It's early in the morning. It's Monday.

It's been a week.

She feels less and less anxious every second.

She...that doesn't happen to people like her. What are the odds even, one in 50k right? She's not a one in 50k kind of person. She's just an average person. She wasn't even sure what she wanted to do with her life because she doesn't really have any particularly obvious stand out skills.

(she vaguely wants to be an author but doesn't have the confidence to pursue it)

..She goes to retrieve a mirror from a drawer.

...That's...that's her?!

Her acne scars are just gone. (Puberty was very unkind to her). Her teeth are straighter ( she had braces as a kid but her parents didn't want to pay for additional orthodontics until she was done growing.). The lump in her nose where it was broken by a carelessly thrown frisbee is straightened out. 

Her eyes are an intense (gorgeous) shade of teal. Her face is...it's still her face but...it's like the version of her face she was comparing her actual face to in the mirror while feeling self-conscious about her appearance.

Yeah she's going to be doing this for a little while. Until the last of the backlash (that's what that is) drains away.

She's aware of something new in her head. Something she could do.

She flinches from it. She doesn't want to touch it until...until she finds someone to partner with her. She's kind of scared that if she ever ever touches it she will Just Fucking Die of not being able to let anyone near enough to get rid of the backlash. Lots of people died in the 70s because they were stuck with backlash. But she's not sure she can just not use it forever. It's right there. Also it might be a chance to do something useful and meaningful with her life instead of...whatever she was going to end up doing before.

She's going to worry about that Later actually. Right now she's going to - well first she's going to clean up the mess she made of her room. Then she's going to empty the camping toilet. And then she's finally going to take a shower. 

She's still kinda bony. She guesses the magic can only work with what's there. But even so her breasts are better. Evenly sized and perkier. And she has a little more padding on her hips. The collection of random small scars she'd collected from trying to keep up with three older brothers are gone. She doesn't have armpit hair (good riddance). 

Balancing on one leg to apply soap is way easier. She feels a bit more flexible too, and moving in general feels easier. She definitely noticed she's stronger while moving all that furniture back. 

She can read all the tiny print on the shampoo bottle easily.

She feels really good actually, physically. Emotionally she's wrung out.

She gets out of the shower and starts blow drying her hair. 

Her dad is going up the stairs to get his things for work and hears the dryer running and notices his daughter's door is opened.

He knocks on the door a bit tentatively, "Nanette? Ma douce are you...all right??"

It belatedly occurs to him that she might not hear the words over the blow dryer but hopefully she'll hear the knock.

She does actually hear him just fine, which . is surprising until she remembers that espers also have better hearing. It occurs to her that he might not be able to hear her over the noise though.  Her hair is  almost dry anyway so she turns off the dryer.

"Papa, I'm...all right now. I...I'm an esper..." She's anxious and self-conscious about what her parents are going to have to say about this. Also talking feels weird after a week. 

"Your maman and I had hoped that was what was going on. It's why we agreed to leave you alone to see if...the problem would resolve itself. Rather than take you to the hospital right away. But it was very brave and smart of you to text Pierre. If you hadn't been able to talk to us through Pierre...it wouldn't have been possible" And because he noticed the anxiety in her voice, "We love you very much and always will."

He's not exactly thrilled about the concept of his not yet 17 year old daughter getting up to some of the things espers get up to but it's not really the time to have that conversation right now. The most important thing is that she's alive and okay.

"..Thank you for not taking me to the hospital. I...would have wanted to die. Even without that..I was so afraid. Even the sounds of cars going by outside scared me. But...I could do a scary thing like text you through Pierre if I thought that something scarier would happen if I didn't. I can use it against itself."

"My brave smart girl. I'm going to tell your maman that you are okay. She will make your favourite omelettes. As many as you want."

She's kind of embarrassed about being called brave and smart. Maybe using it against itself is a little clever but it was sort of an accident and she doesn't think it counts as brave to do a scary thing because you're trying to avoid something worse.

Whatever, she throws some clothes on and heads downstairs.

She's chopping up some mushrooms but she drops the knife and darts over when Annette comes into the room.

Hugs?

Hugs!

Wow it turns out she really needed that and now she's crying because of how badly she needed that. And clinging kinda hard.

"Ma bebé, ma douce, please I need my ribs." She's hugging back fairly tightly and stroking Annette's hair.

She loosens her grip. "S-ssory" sob, sputter, "I just..." sob "I love you."

She's going to cry for like half an hour.

And she will be held until she's cried out.

(Technically she's supposed to be working, however, work can get fucked, she'll deal with it later)

And after that, "So, three eggs?"

Oh right, there was going to be food. Also the ingredients laid out on the counter are causing her to notice that she's really incredibly hungry actually.

"Yes, please."

It turns out she is going to Destroy All Eggs in this kitchen. (all six of them), plus some cheese, ham, and mushrooms and two glasses of milk. 

Then she's going to lie down on the couch like an overstuffed anaconda and take a nap. 

Wow okay. That can happen. The selection of food they ended up with was not exactly optimized, she guesses. Also it was a really rough week.

She spends Monday hugging her parents, eating, and napping

She goes back to school on Tuesday, she's behind but her teachers are happy to give her extensions, according to policy. People are kind of staring at her, which she has mixed feelings about. A few of them have questions, but she doesn't want to talk about it beyond 'yes it sucked, no I don't know what my power is yet, no I'm not touching it until I have someone to guide me' . It's still too raw. Also she's not sure she wants her backlash to be public, yet. 

A few weeks pass. Her hair was dark brown enough that it takes most of a week after awakening before she notices that her roots are growing in a very dark purplish blue. She also gains a noticeable amount of weight, in very pleasing places. Which does have the side effect of attracting more attention she feels kind of awkward about even if it also feels good. This also necessitates buying new clothes. Since they aren't sure if her body is done catching up to where her new set points are they end up buying clothes that are slightly baggy on purpose in hopes of avoiding needing to replace her whole wardrobe more than once.

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.