Oh dear. 

We don't know what her power is, so I'm not sure how to make her to stop. I will do some research, but if you have any ideas...

She's not doing it constantly so it's not purely passive. Has she woken up and then fallen unconscious again before?

I have seen her shift around a few times, but her eyes never opened and she didn't respond to being talked to or touched, so I was never sure that I hadn't imagined it.

He starts researching accidental esper power usage (and ignores the nagging fear that it isn't accidental....)

Epione can try to get the guiding rate up faster to get ahead of it, but if she's not using her own power that's going to involve more skin contact. Is that OK/medically safe?

There's a few minutes before the next reply.

More skin contact is OK, yes.

In that case Epione takes off her scrub top - she's got a stupidly high tech bra on under there because sweat drips and staircase jiggles are one of the five hundred thousand things that are worth engineering away if she can, that stays on - and starts carefully slowly removing Kani's top too. The stuffed animal is cute and everything but it's getting in the way of the maximally guiding position here; she passes it to Kevin and he sets it on a side table.

Under the hospital gown (which can be unbuttoned and pulled aside), Kani is wearing a bralette that was clearly purchased before her esper awakening. Her hand grips the stuffed animal, but not with enough force to actually stop them from removing it.

The backlash spike from before was pretty substantial - even with this increased skin contact, it's going to take a while to get that back down.

Yeah. The podcast about whales is rewound to the last part Epione heard clearly and she settles in again.

And after an hour or so of higher-bandwidth guiding, Kani starts to wake again, shifting under Epione. 

Something feels... really nice...

Epione, for her part, is very nearly zeroed out, so she doesn't panic and flee the room.

"Kani?" she says.

That's her name... she should reply... "Wuh?"

With some effort, she opens her eyes.

And then her entire body tenses up, because suddenly she's in the hospital with no shirt on and there is a stranger holding her from behind???

"Don't use your power," Epione cautions.

"You've been doing that every time you start to wake up and you've been in a coma for weeks," Kevin adds.

Kani is kind of freaking out, but she does manage to hear "[??¿¿] for weeks", and now she's differently freaked out, which suffices to stop her from trying to break free.

She whimpers in confusion. (At least the stranger feels absurdly nice to touch. (Is this guiding? She's an esper now, and she's never felt anything like this...))

"I'm compatible with you and I'm here to guide you," Epione says. "But now that you're awake, if you won't use your power, we can put our shirts back on and you can talk to your parents. Would you prefer that?"

She tries to think.

It's weirdly hard to think. There's a stranger holding her and that's weird and embarrassing but the guiding feels really good and she - didn't realize how much she missed being held - but it's not the same, this isn't Mags or Thrana, it's just some esper and her brain is TRICKING her into making it feel nice anyways (but it does feel nice...).

She doesn't understand why she's in the hospital again! It was supposed to be over!

 "...I want to talk to my fathers." She doesn't manage to verbalize an opinion about the shirts, but she does shift around to increase the skin contact between them.

"Do you want to do that with our shirts on, or with the sheet pulled up?"

aaaa this is embarrassing!!!

 "...Sheet seems easier," she mumbles.

"Kevin, can you get that please?"

Kevin gets that.

"This is my partner Kevin. I'm Epione," Epione goes on.

"'m Kani." she pauses.

"...the guiding feels really nice, but I don't... understand why you are here. Or why I'm here." 

"Your fathers got in touch with - probably a lot of people but in particular our agency, which knows things like private backlashes, trying to match you up with someone to pull you out of it," says Kevin. "You were apparently - reflexively? - using your power every time the backlash ticked over to chronic enough that you could wake up."