Well.  Let's see what a motivated agent can come up with.

She picks an impersonal-feeling home.  Modern, sleek, metallic appliances, stone countertops.  It has a den, and that can be her concession to her current house's comfy style.  Her agent offers her a cleaning service, and she obviously accepts it.  She'll decide if she wants to keep him or not later - he did have some sketchy bullshit sidechannel information, but he clearly used the information to her advantage without ever admitting to it.  Maybe that's okay.

The move is, if anything, too easy.  If she was learning to drive a rent-a-truck across the country, she'd be terrified of backing into something the sensors didn't catch or missing an exit somehow.  If she'd been on a plane ride, she would have been stressed about missing her flight and touching strangers' elbows and legs and stretching out the kinks after a cramped seat. 

But instead, a pair of nice young men had taken all of her worldly belongings away to be transported without her assistance.  After that she  was two teleport hops away from a ten minute Otto! ride to her new home.  And now that she's at her new home, well.  She doesn't have anything to think about or to do.

It would be so easy to dip into just a little bit of backlash so she could be properly, soul-satisfyingly annoyed.  Instead, she's not much of anything.  A little sad.  But mostly empty.

When her annoyance is justified by her brain and also by her backlash, it's just so obviously correct.  It's like scratching a poison ivy rash - you know it's the wrong thing to do, everyone tells you it's wrong.  But it feels so good.  In her current mental state, she's probably qualified to solo D-ranks, but D-ranks you barely need a team for.  You just walk people out.

She wants to ask her power the one question it ever bothers to answer, and then let her power guide her hands.  She wants a dungeon monster, one of the nasty ones.  When her endorsed hatred of dungeon monsters and her backlash-induced annoyance with them combine - it's not like sex.  It's not love.  There isn't a word for it in English, Carol doesn't think.  But it's such satisfaction to destroy something that deserves it.

But she can't even lean on her stupid emotional crutch because then she'll have backlash and she doesn't have a fucking partner anymore, now does she.

Okay.  What would make her happy?  ... she isn't sure.  What would normally make her happy?  She makes a few notes, a habit she picked up pretty recently but isn't thinking about the source of the habit.

A good dungeon(no)
A good meal
Tim
Rock climbing(tried, no)
A jog
Seeing papa(don't want to talk to anyone)
A movie

Okay.  This suggests a plan.  She'll run downtown, change in a bathroom or something, see a movie and then grab a meal.  Or grab a meal and then see a movie.  She's flexible.

The jog helps a little.  It's simple, it's easy.  Pick up Foot A, put down Foot A.  Pick up Foot B, put down Foot B  Keep doing it over and over.  Don't think, because if you think you'll start thinking about the stitch in your side, the ache in your lungs.  She feels oddly free, in a way that rock climbing hadn't let her be.  She picks out a pace that feels natural to her, and whenever she comes perilously close to thinking, she steps it up a little.

She's running by the end.  Sweat runs down her face, her tank-top is clinging unpleasantly to her chest.  She's flushed and panting and she's not thinking and if she could run like this forever, she'd be happy.

Oh.  I just picked a direction and ran.  Well.  Thankfully for Carol, modern conveniences are such that she's able to change in the family restroom of a nearby supermarket.  She's definitely not willing to eat anything after that little wind sprint she'd ended on.

A movie isn't too far away, and her legs aren't quite so jello that she can't do another half-mile.  She wants a comedy.  Not a rom com.  Action movie.  She'll talk to the ticket seller, get a recommendation, and mentally heckle the fight scenes.

She turns to ask Tim to show her how to throw someone like that in their next spar, and -

oh.  yeah.

She sticks it out for the remaining 23 minutes.  The guy gets the girl, the beta couple get together.  She's too dignified to flee the theater, but she doesn't dawdle leaving, either.

She's recovered enough that she won't puke if she eats, and she's not hungry but she ran ten miles without thinking about it and probably ought to eat something.  She picks the most mom'n'pop looking place she can find, which turns out to be a small steakhouse.  It's expensive, which is to say a meal here costs .012 dungeons(on average).  She's good for it.

Hm.  That guy's cute.  No ring.  She and her puppy previous partner were mostly monogamous, but he didn't mind her hooking up for guiding.  And he can't complain now, can he?

She makes a move.  He's a little shocked, but he flirts back.  She's not ready to go all the way, not today.  She's not ready for the vulnerability. 

She is ready to go down on him, though.  There's no guiding involved, and in some ways she's relieved about it.  She doesn't want everything to be about being an esper, forever.

By the time she's done, her new acquaintance is exhausted and she's feeling a bit worn out herself.  She calls herself an autotaxi and goes 'home'.  She's tired enough to pass out, this time.

She moves on.  She finds a local pro guide with tolerable compatibility.  She runs as many dungeons as she can manage with her backlash load.  She travels.  A lot.  Anyplace that'll pay her travel fees is good enough for her.

She's not okay.

But she will be.